[BEGIN]
__AUTHOR__
Felix Kuznetsov
__TITLE__
OF HUMAN
VALUES
__TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2007-04-07T16:24:40-0700
__TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"
__SUBTITLE__
Soviet Literature
Today
COPY 2
Progress Publishers
Moscow
DEC 14 1984
[1]
Translated by Evgeni Filippov
Designed by Vadim Kukshov
OCJIHKC K> jiieuoB
rOPH3OHTM HEJIOBEHHOCTH
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r: __COPYRIGHT__ © [something russian] «Hporpecc», 1980 r.147--80
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
[2] CONTENTS Page liitnitliifliim. Not by Bread Alone Chapter Out. The Main Book . . Chapter Tirn. Probing the Fast Chapter Three. The Test of War Charter Fniir. The Closest of Links Chapter I-'ire. To Be a Real Man Chapter Six. Man and His Work . 5 14 4« 73 98 149 [3] ~ [4] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Introduction __ALPHA_LVL1__ Not by Bread AloneContemporary Soviet literature has over the years come to regard the problem of spiritual values as its main concern. The eternal question of the meaning of life and meaningful human existence-the key element in any system of spiritual values-is one which every person and every new historical era tackle anew as it were and solve in their own way. In the context of developed socialism and the ongoing scientific and technological revolution, this question, which has to do with man's innermost being, and reflects the complex dialectic of the individual's relations with society, commands growing attention of writers and readers alike. We shall find constant proof of this in the writings of Chinghiz Aitmatov and Vasyl Bykov, Fyodor Abramov and Vassili Belov, Vladimir Tendryakov and Victor Astafiev, Yuri Trifonov and Valentin Rasputin.
Many recent prose works have responded sensitively to that social need and have boldly come to grips with controversial philosophical issues and views of the world asserting ever more potently the spiritual and moral values of socialism. Soviet literature's dramatically increased historicism, the deepening of its philosophical quests, arguments over the problem of cultural heritage, the concepts of the specifically national and the popular, and the growing civic commitment of the writers-ail these are in the final analysis various signs of the same underlying process going on in the presentday Soviet literature, a process that is concerned with the evolution of world outlook. That process calls for close, systematic and scholarly study.
Consider this: a little over sixty years after the Revolution-less than an average life span-socialist society, 5 developing in accordance with its inherent laws, has been able to write in its Constitution that concern for the individual's spiritual and moral values is a duty of the State. This is humanism in action!
The main historical achievement of the Land of Soviets since the Great October Socialist Revolution has been the building of developed socialist society, an integrated and highly organised social system. At the mature stage of socialism many aspects of the country's economic, social, political and cultural development need to be viewed in a new way to ensure greater harmony between them. As socialism evolves into its highest stage, communism, the nation's spiritual potential is ever more fully realised.
Socialist society has entered a new historic stage in the building of communism, a stage at which spiritual and moral attitudes have assumed greater relevance. Increasing importance is attached to duty, conscience, responsibility, and the improvement and self-improvement of the individual.
That is an objective feature of the socialist way of life and its fundamental difference from the bourgeois ``consumer society".
The socialist way of life has been engendered by the new type of relationships among the members of socialist society and it has changed, deepened and acquired ever new content even as socialism advanced towards maturity. Now that socialism has reached its advanced stage the Soviet people's new way of life has taken a definite shape, which enables scholars and thinkers to take stock of that novel historical phenomenon as a whole.
This is not to say that the socialist way of life has, in the conditions of developed socialism, assumed its final and immutable shape. On the contrary, it continues to evolve as it asserts its social potential and reveals the full range and depth of the humanistic content inherent in the socialist social relations.
The dynamism of the socialist way of life meets the objective needs of mature socialism and goes a long way to determine our literary process and its intense searches. The intensity of that search and the challenges facing contemporary literature reflect the social historical change.
Leonid Brezhnev, speaking at the 25th Congress of the 6 CPSU, characterised the processes going on in the presentday Soviet literature and singled out the topic of morality and moral quests. ``Though there have been some failures here, the achievements have been greater. It is to the credit of our writers and artists that they seek to bring out the best human qualities, like firmness of principle, honesty and depth of emotion, always in line with the sound and solid principles of our communist morality.''
The very fact that moral searches in literature have come in for such close attention at the 25th Congress of the CPSU is significant. It is a measure of the scope and importance of the Soviet literature's quests and recognition of the special role it has to play in the shaping of people's moral attitudes because the life of the human soul and the human spirit is a sphere in which literature holds undisputed dominion.
In general, moral quests are an obligatory feature of any genuine literature if it is addressed to man. Genuine literature always searches, and we must follow the search and analyse its results if we are to understand the characteristics of the moral search in which Soviet literature is presently engaged. It seems to me that having answered that question we would understand why the moral search has acquired such importance in socialist society and literature today.
What distinguishes the present period from any other is that spiritual and moral issues are abiding concern of the whole of our multinational Soviet literature whether its authors write about the Revolution, the Great Patriotic War of 1941--1945, the history of the building of socialism or the contemporary scene.
In full accordance with the objective laws of a society of developed socialism, humanistic and moral criteria are emerging as the ultimate criteria in all spheres of human enterprise, both in real life and in its portrayal in literature.
This is the main message of a number of recent prose works which, though varying in artistic merit and depth of insight, are equally uncompromising in challenging narrowness of spiritual and intellectual reach, alerting us to the dangers of spiritual vacuum, these ``black holes" in man's consciousness that are incompatible with our socialist way of life and the communist conception of man.
It is a salient feature of our literary process today that the importance of spiritual and moral values for man and 7 society is being urged with passion and, in some books, with alarm. Much of contemporary Soviet literature argues that lack of spiritual and moral bearings, spiritual and moral vacuum, cripple the individual and are at odds with the essence of the socialist way of life; that man-any man, and especially man in communist society-is impossible without a foundation of moral values.
Examples in point are The White Steamer by Chinghiz Aitmatov, Sotnikov by Vasil Bykov, The Shore by Yuri Bondarev, The Deadline, Live and Remember and Farewell to Matyora by Valentin Rasputin, the stories of Vassili Shukshin and the best of Yuri Trifonov's stories. For all the differences among them their main concern is the same: the significance of genuine human values for man and our society. It is this that identifies them as part of the literature of socialist realism and makes them so necessary in the period of developed socialism, which is called ``developed'' precisely because it reveals ever more fully and profoundly its humanistic potential, a quality Marx described as genuine humanism.
As the 25th Congress or the CPSU has stressed, the growing material well-being must be constantly accompanied by rising ideological, moral and cultural standards of the people. Otherwise we may have relapses into philistine petty-bourgeois mentality.
That accounts for the commitment and ardour with which Soviet literature today challenges the insipient dangers of spiritual barrenness and philistinism and upholds the richness of the human spirit.
But how does it go about this task? That is the big question.
The spiritual search of contemporary literature is increasingly directed towards positive social solution of that question; As the search deepens and its results are being assessed by individual writers and the community at large, abstract systems of values divorced from concrete time and social environment are coming to be discredited.
Our literature does not see how the basic questions of the human spirit can be solved otherwise than on this `` temporal" earth, in the social environment and in the life of the nation. Spiritual and moral problems are simply insoluble outside a real social context.
Our society has reached a stage of maturity when it is clear that the lofty and eternal human values, the questions 8 of the spirit and morality, such as the meaning of life, search of that meaning, spirituality, honour, truth, goodness, compassion, firmness of principle and conscience, are our own values, the values, that is,' of real, i. e., socialist, communist, humanism which our system and way of life assert. The failures of abstract humanism lie not in its preaching of the vast importance for mankind of truth, goodness and conscience, categories that have great relevance for all of us, but in an idealistic interpretation of these values that removes them from social context and in its impotence to change the world and man for the better.
The Marxist-Leninist conception of morality, which is based on the theory of social classes, does not abolish freedom of moral choice or human conscience, as Lenin stressed. On the contrary, socialism and the socialist way of life are heirs to the humanistic values worked out in trie course of mankind's suffering-laden history.
That proposition takes on added validity for literature today because it provides the focus of the unprecedented ideological battle for man's soul and mind which the world is witnessing.
Yuri Bondarev's novel The Shore (of which more later) boldly puts before the public one of the fundamental issues of our time: that of humanism and the socialist way of life as the guarantor of genuine human values.
The socialist society has entered a stage in its history when we see ourselves as being responsible for the past, present and future of all genuine human values.
It is no longer enough to write the history of literature, or of Russian criticism or Russian social thought. The time has come to write a history of humanism in this country (and the world) making all the things that are important and valuable part of the socialist heritage.
Present-day Soviet literature has its roots in the humanistic tradition and is marked by growing philosophical depth, attempting to rise to the great heights of human spirit and discuss such eternal questions as the meaning of life and human conscience, and to instil such intransient human values as kindness, truth, honesty, decency, conscience and charity. Soviet literature has in recent years evinced greater philosophical potential treating ``eternal'' issues and ``eternal'' values as socialist issues and values and interpreting them in a new socialist way.
9The meaning of life and conscience, good and evil are eternal issues because they will remain with man as long as humanity exists. As has been noted above, these issues nave a way or cropping up again and again demanding new answers from every person and every historical era. The solution would always be determined by concrete social and historical circumstances in the life of an individual.
Contemporary Soviet literature identifies itself ever more deeply with the spirit of the people, democracy, patriotism ana internationalism, the native land, its people and their work, its nature, in short all that has forever been the ultimate source of all the spiritual and moral values of society and man, literature and the arts, and human culture as a whole. That this process is actually taking place will be readily apparent to anyone who cares to read, say, contemporary Soviet prose about rural life.
It would be wrong, however, to associate the deepening democratic and popular character of Soviet literature only with writing about the rural scene. It is an all-embracing process, for relentless probing into the question of human values that marks contemporary Soviet literature calls for uncompromising and affirmative answers, and the great Russian literature has always drawn on the life of the people in upholding everything really noble and genuine.
One of the main trends in contemporary literature's moral quests is associated with such names as Fyodor Abramov, Victor Astafiev, Vassili Belqv, Evgeny Nqsov, Boris Mozhayev, Gavriil Troyepolsky, Vladimir Soloukhin, Vassili Shukshin, Valentin Rasp~utin, Victor Likhonosov, Sergei Krutilin, Ion Drutse, and Grant Matevosyan. These writers have brought great artistic force to the poignant question of spiritual and moral values in this runaway age.
What is the significance of their brilliant prose? Along with other writers, they have brought to public attention the problem of human values and in doing so have provided pointers to the 'solution of that problem arguing that it should be based on the real foundation of universal human values that is to be found in national culture and national morality evolved during the centuries of man's work and struggle on earth. They have reminded us that is the only foundation for solving the root moral problems of our age.
Russian literature is humanistic because of its kinship 10 with the people. It is this that makes Russian literature great.
Inseparable link with the Motherland, and its people, love for and duty towards the native land and its peoplethese are the key concepts in the treatment of the problem of values by Soviet writers. It is a solid concept of morality interpreted democratically, i.e., in a way which harks back to the sources of revolution in the morality of the Decembrists, the ``men of the 1860s'', the Narodniks and People's Freedom revolutionaries. Kinship with the people and awareness of history have enabled present-day prose to break some new ground in the spiritual and moral sphere.
Contemporary Soviet prose writers are ever more deeply aware of Nature as a spiritual and aesthetic human value, and come out passionately for the protection of Nature as a permanent moral factor that ennobles people. The nature of the native land is related to native history, thus fostering love of one's country.
At their best, Soviet prose works about the village are marked by a concrete social and historical approach in the portrayal of the people's morality. They IOOK, not only at the historical background, but also at the complex and contradictory process of the emergence of new morality among the grassroots, a socialist morality whose main feature is active and creative involvement of the masses. The books that spring to mind are The Pryaslins by Fyodor Abramov, Commission by Sergei Zalygin, Chronicle of Polesye by Ivan Melezh, The Tale of You by Mikhailo Stelmakh, The Last Bow by Victor Astafiev, the stories of Evgeni Nosov, The Memory of the Land by Vladimir Fomenko, The Willow That Does Not weep by Mikhail Alexeyev. These works show how the morality of the working people is being enriched by new socialist elements. This view has fought its way for recognition in the modern Soviet prose and literary criticism amid arguments and struggle against two extremes: a nihilistic attitude towards the legacy of the morality of the working people, on the one hand, and an idealised approach to the spiritual heritage of the past in which the social and class evaluations are ignored.
This view rejects both relativism and nihilism in the question of universal human values, as well as their interpretation in terms of abstract humanism that removes them from the concrete historical, class and social background.
Soviet literature asserts that socialism is heir to universal 11 moral values which it regards as the necessary inner core of every man. The best or its works foster human kindness, compassion and empathy, fine sensibilities and intolerance of evil.
But we believe that good should be active and humanism genuine, and therefore we think that asserting in the souls of our readers the norms of universal human morality, though extremely important and necessary, is not enough. It is important that an individual's moral development proceed from personal honesty to civic honesty, with the individual attaining truly human, hence social, identity and arriving at a conscious and active social stand. As yissarion Belmsky maintained, civic convictions are the crowning of education.
A major ideological concern of contemporary Soviet literature is the investigation and assertion of new morality shaped by the socialist system. These new moral qualities comprise all the best things generated by human spirit in the past and simultaneously express the essence of that unprecedented moral phenomenon, the Soviet Man.
This brings us to another notable feature of the present-day literary process: the increasingly historical approach of literature, a quality indispensable for it if it is to gain a social insight into the life orthe people and answer the overriding questions of our age. The historical approach is the sign of our time indicating the depth and maturity of the social preoccupations of our literature which are intimately linked with its deepening moral philosophical searches and the problem of human values, which is the basic problem of literature.
Writers turn to the past not only to reproduce the sweep and historical implications of what has been accomplished but also for the sake of the present in order to find convincing answers to the questions that engage the contemporary mind.
The relevance of the questions and problems taken up in these books stems from the fact that they convince us that the sterling spiritual and moral qualities that ensured our victory in the Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War of 1941--45 should be traced back to the Revolution and socialism.
The best of contemporary prose writing about the Revolution and the Great Patriotic War is part of the mainstream of Soviet literature helping to foster in human souls the qualities that are our main concern in literature and life: 12 purity of aspirations and civic commitment of the Soviet man today.
To invest his existence with spiritual meaning man must above all be aware of his social role and significance, have an opportunity to contribute to the common cause, to think and act for the national interest, and take an active stand, to display civic courage, on the main social and economic questions.
This is the only way for man to become a full individual, to live meaningfully, to overcome his alienation from himself and society and to work creatively.
This is the focus of social and moral problems and the main promise of socialist democracy which makes the working man master of his factory, collective farm and indeed his country. This is also the focus of literature.
Our publicistic writing is doing much to offer insights into the main social, spiritual and etnical problems. The recent years have witnessed a revival and strengthening of moralphilosophical publicistic writing which consistently probes into the current social psychology. This too is a sign of the time and a notable feature of present-day Soviet literature which seeks deeper understanding of the contemporary man, including within its purview all the diversity and uniqueness of the individual's relations with society, looking not only at their personal but also at their civic aspect, proceeding from the assumption that the latter form the core of the individual.
Both publicistic and imaginative prose regard man's social attitudes, activity and civic courage and honest service to national interest as the key to understanding an individual.
To be a citizen! This is the bidding of the time. And contemporary literature cannot ignore that call because the future belongs to the citizen, the socially active individual.
[13] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter One __ALPHA_LVL1__ The Main Book __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1``...Most, if not all, writers have their Main Book, a book they are yet to write. It is their most favourite and cherished book and it calls them irresistibly,'' wrote Olga Bergholtz in her book Daytime Stars. ``A writer may not know beforehand what form it would take-a poem, a novel or memoirs-but he knows what its essence would be: he knows that it would be about himself, his life, and especially the life of his soul, his conscience and the evolution of his consciousness; and all this is inseparable from the life of the people.''
As Olga Bergholtz sees it, the Main Book starts from the sources, the early formative impressions of life, and it is informed with a clear and powerful feeling, that of ``our great idea''. A writer's Main book must be ``imbued with the truth about our common existence refracted through my heart'', she says. The Main Book is ``the confessions of a son of his age" and if the author rises to the challenge of his time, then the story of his heart and its innermost recesses would inevitably tell about the heart of his nation, and about his own destiny.
The author is writing his Main Book continually, progressing towards it and dreaming about it all the time, says Olga Bergholtz. This book is in constant flux, reflecting as it does the flow of life and the growth of the author's consciousness. For that reason it is always a rough copy as it were.
Olga Bergholtz had wanted to write such a book-even though only a rough copy-all her life. The Daytime Stars is a diary of her spiritual life, an ``open'' diary which freely mingles past, present and future, the memories and anticipation of life. Passionate publicistic writing alternates with 14 lyrical flashbacks and confessional passages with an account of events that had struck the writer.
That unusual book was prompted by the need to remember, compare and rethink all her fife from the sources to the summing up. In it the writer takes a voyage into infathomable depths, notably those of her own soul. It is a voyage into the past, present and future of her life which she perceives as part of the nation's life.
Although the notes of Olga Bergholtz tell the story of her life, and only indirectly that of the people, the book reveals to a very high degree what she describes as `` extraordinary" awareness of being in touch with the life of the people in time and space. She refers to this state as ``an awesome feeling of being in vital link with all that surrounds me, with all that disappears into the earth and water and all that has been created and is being created on water and land today...''
In Daytime Stars Olga Bergholtz looks back at the `` beginning of all beginnings'', ``the sources of consciousness" which are the seat of that all-embracing moral feeling, the feeling of oneness with one's people and the destinies of one's land Writing about her childhood in the ancient Russian city of Uglitch, Olga Bergholtz recalls: ``My early years, like with all people, were wonderful, full of mystery and discoveries in an unknown world. I remember those years as a land to which I have lost my way, but whose beautiful landscape my soul will never forget.'' She starts the story of her soul with poetic and poignant perceptions of childhood; of the ancient city of Uglitch; of the old Russian monastery surrounded by lindens, the crippled rebel bell which rang at the moment when Tsarevich Dmitri was murdered, and of the Valdai harness with jingling bells made famous in the songs of the coachmen. And of course, about the gentle, and caressing sweep of Russian countryside which had early struck her imagination. She tells about the glade near the village of Zaruchevye where her parents once forbade her to go to pick mushrooms and which she often sees in her dreams to this day. That glade, the writer tells us had tender green grass; it was bordered by birch-trees with tiny leaves and opened up on a broad sweeping quiet landscape. The glade was on the top of a steep cliff and one could see far down and around: the boundless downs roll gently out of sight and one can see a meadow, blue crowding forests beyond, a narrow blue river 15 glittering below. The sensation is of space and light, of Russian wisdom and kindness. ``In my dreams I always reach that glade and stand there for a long time feasting my eyes on the beautiful space, and I wake up refreshed, tranquil and confident in a special way, for I know that all this-- Motherland, light and life-exists not only in my dreams...''
The merit of Daytime Stars is not only that it captures the feeling of the native land but also traces how that lofty and moral feeling grows in a person's consciousness. Its sources are the beauty of the country's nature, the enthralling poetry of labour and of the child's excitement at learning about life.
The feeling of native land always has distinct social overtones, and Olga Bergholtz describes in precise poetic detail how that moral feeling awakened in her and gradually etched itself on her consciousness. It is chiefly fostered by the life of the people of which one comes to feel oneself to be apart.
The scenes of her family moving from Uglich to Petrograd in Daytime Stars recapture the awakening of that mysterious yet natural feeling.
She woke up from a jolt and her child's imagination was struck by the many many faces around her which all looked alike. Male and female, old and young, they all looked the same: yellow like a church candle, with dark rings around their eyes-the face of famine which struck the Volga area because of a severe drought and crop failure. There was something terrible and elemental about this mass of humanity with the same face, the unceasing wailing and the heartrending yelling of children.
``'Its' because the war is over... Everybody going home... To Petrograd like ourselves... Everybody goes to Petrograd. And we are like them, we're all going to Petrograd together, all together'. These thoughts raced through my mind and I suddenly felt myself to DC at the mercy of that elemental force and realised starkly that I simply did not exist in this earth separately... We spent the whole day at the railway station and I looked with a new and avid curiosity at the starving people, took in with my whole being the din and moaning and felt a kind of curiosity and awe at the novel, vague, mysterious and enormous sensation that welled up in me, the sensation of Being.''
The discovery of herself as part of the people was 16 reinforced by new impressions of the trip, especially the tale ;ibout light told by an old peasant in the dark sleepy train bound lor I'cfrograd. He spoke in a husky mysterious voice ol ;i talc-teller about a wonderful machine which ``had a kind of daw-like bucket" and could scoop up hundreds of cartloads of earth at a time, and about lots of people from all parts of Russia-stone masons and quarry workers-gathering around that machine and working on the bank of a river.
``~`What for? They'll have a waterfall there! A great waterfall, you know. And it'll be so powerful that it will give light. Like God... The whole of Russia will be flooded with light and it will reach every nook and cranny... That force can do anything: it can grind the hardest of iron, move machines and, believe it, man, it can plough; that's the most important thing, and not the way we do it with a hoe, but it can till thousands of miles at once. Power and light, as from Godjjpower and light.'
``The narrator heaved a noisy sigh and kept silent awhile. The train click-clacked on its rails. Everybody slept, looking as if they were lost in thought. They were emaciated, threatened with typhus, round and immobile figures. They slept as the train was rushing them to Petrograd.
``'We're cold and hungry, so at least let there be light,' said a young, sad and tired voice. 'Light is better than darkness, isn't it, old man?'
`` 'Perhaps you are right,' the latter agreed without much enthusiasm and then said in an inspired raucous voice: 'It will spill out from the Volkhov Power Dam and will shine and flutter all over Russia. Lenin said it should be so.'"
And so the first awareness of Being, of one's native land enters one's soul along with a dream about light, and that is inevitably associated with the name of Lenin. A mature civic sense or country and identification with the native soil and people are more than just love for the landscapes, fields and meadows and a yearning for that place on earth where one was born and reared. It is also a sense of being personally responsible for the destinies of one's people and an eagerness to contribute to its better lot. It is not accidental that ``The Tale of Light" in Daytime Stars is followed by the story of the English writer H. G. Wells who travelled on the same railway at the same time. He too saw these women, men and oldsters and the same life. And yet he could see nothing but darkness in Russia. He failed to see anything 17 else, Olga Bcrgholtz suggests, because it was we who lived our lives while he merely observed. He observed it like a stage from his train window.
H.~G. Wells was not part of the life he looked at. But the Russian peasants who thought of their country's future as full of lignt, lived that life, and so did Lenin who did not only dream but had set about early to translate the people's dream about light into reality. ``Be proud of them, be proud with a deep, intense, tacit and open pride. Be proud always, remember them always, whatever happens to you, your country and your people,'' says the writer addressing herself.
She tells how all these, now legendary things, Wells' trip and his talk with Lenin, the things associated with her childhood and representing its highlights, moulded and enriched her perception of the world. She tells how the nation's battle to build a new just society contributed to her feeling of identity with the socialist Motherland and the great endeavours of her people, how it evolved into an emotional commitment to the communist world outlook.
Motherland and communism, the destiny of the people and Lenin-this blend of profound and sincere convictions is preached powerfully by the hero of Da)'time Stars.
``Lenin entered trie hearts of my generation from early childhood as a great, sometimes formidable force, radiating kindly light. As we grew up his image assumed flesh and blood and became closer to our souls, and our love for him was deeply human; it was constant, natural and serene, like the breathing of a serene person,'' Olga Bergholtz said.
Nothing can be loftier and more poetic than romanticism inspired by revolutionary ideas. Communist convictions form the core of the individual and his moral attitudes, his perception and interpretation of the world. The appeal of Daytime Stars by Olga Bergholtz flows from its sincere convictions and genuine faith in the people and communism which informs every line in the book. This is what lends intensity to her reflections about Motherland and the destinies of peoples.
``I'll be a professional revolutionary,'' said the future writer when she joined the Young Communist League as a girl. And as she said it, ``a strange and novel happiness made her almost breathless''. ``I realised, not with my brain but with my whole being, my spirit and flesh, that I had given a vow 18 and that I would not break it, because the moment I made that vow I began a new life and going back on it would have meant not living.
``This still gives me strength, despite all the odds, to live a full life. It is the confidence that I have not broken the vow I had given in my girlhood, a knowledge that I belong to the Party cemented by Lenin's name.''
Only such convictions enable a writer to aspire to writing his Main Book, because they alone guarantee that the artist's message would be important for the people. They redouble the writer's sense of oneness with the life of the people and help him to see the general in the particular, and to see national concerns behind profoundly personal concerns, and vice versa.
It is natural that in writing her Main Book and meditating about her Motherland and the Soviet man's sense of being in touch with the destinies of his Motherland and of our great ideas, Olga Bergholtz arrives, or rather, starts, from the figure of Lenin.
To her Lenin is the symbol of ``our untamable time... He has long become an inseparable part of our consciousness and its constant development''. Her own perception of Lenin is best conveyed in the scene where she, a Young Communist League member, is shown a bust of Lenin by Gleb Maksimilianovich Krzhizhanovsky, one of the authors of the national plan of electrification of Russia.
``'See what he was like,' he said in a near-whisper and rather sternly. 'Have a good look'.
``Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the sculptor,'' writes Olga Bergholtz, ``but this was 'my own' Lenin. The sculpture was full of light, almost luminous, though the bronze did not glitter but was coarse and uneven revealing the work of the sculptor's excited fingers, and that made the sculpture moving. The image of Lenin too was unusual, especially for that time: the face that looked at me from under a carelessly tilted cap and from an upturned collar was not an indomitable face of a leader, but the face of a Russian artisan, on which played a sly smile, and the screwed eyes added to the impression of an intelligent mischievous craftsman, a hard worker and a wizard of the Revolution, the intrepid pioneer. The face of a good honest man looked at me with 'the eyes of a tireless hunter of lies and the misery of life,' as Gorky wrote about him.''
19 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 2The Main Book of the Soviet literature as a whole is a book about Lenin whose name is associated with the Revolution. First introduced by Gorky and Mayakovsky, that subject has been the abiding theme of writers for many decades. Back in 1934 Nikolai Tikhonov told the First Congress of Soviet Writers that Soviet literature's ``hero is the builder of classless society, the positive character no matter how great or obscure. Towering among them is the great figure of Lenin about whom poets have written again and again.''
The Leniniana in Soviet prose started with Maxim Gorky's essays, ``A Peasant's Story of Lenin" by Lydia Seifulina, Mikhail Prishvin's story ``Lenin Hunting,'' ``A Drawing of Lenin" by Konstantin Fedin and ``The Sun Stone" by Pavel Bazhov. Others who wrote about Lenin were Marietta Shaginian, Emmanuil Kazakevich, Valentin Katayev, A. Kononov, Zoya Voskresenskaya, A. Koptelov, Savva Dangulov, Maria Prilezhayeva, Sergei Alexeyev, and S. Vinogradskaya.
The treatment of that main theme in Soviet literature has been constantly evolving with the growth and changes in our life and mentality. One of the more important and notable Soviet books about Lenin is the dilogy called The Ulyanov- Family written by that doyen of Soviet authors, Marietta Shaginian. Together with her book of essays called Retracing Lenin's Steps and the story ``A Test in History'', it earned her the Lenin Prize for literature.
Marietta Shaginian describes her novel as a family chronicle. And indeed, the dilogy is strictly documentary prose based on the author's own study of archives and prolonged and painstaking scholarly research. The author's unusual talent,' however, translates it into a convincing work of art.
Marietta Shaginian's novel tells the story of Lenin's parents, Ilya Nikolayevicn and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanovs. ft draws authentic portraits of them and shows their views and inner world. It traces the life of Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolayevich, who was a teacher in Penza, then in Nizhny Novgorod and finally in Simbirsk; it speaks about his views on life and education and his contribution to public education in Russia.
Credit is due to the writer for happily resisting the temptation of over-fictionalising the story by inventing ``twists'' in the plot or indulging in conjectures. She was aware that 20 complete historical authenticity would be best appreciated and valued by readers. The book is full of documentary material about Ilya Nikolayevich's educational activities, and about Russian life in the 1860s and 1870s, quoting freely from newspapers of the time, official reports and messages, notebooks and diaries and even from the minutes Ilya Nikolayevich kept of the meetings of teachers in Nizhny Novgorod where fundamental problems of education were fiercely debated.
The educational principles advocated by Ilya Nikolayevich, a mentor, teacher, school organiser and major Russian educationist, are still relevant today, the author maintains. A follower of Ushinsky and a pupil of the great mathematician Lobachevsky, his pedagogical activity was based on respect for human nature and the conception of education as help to nature and not violence over it, an idea propounded by advanced Russian pedagogical thinkers. ``The child is not a tabula rasa, a clean slate on which one can write whatever one likes; the child is a person and should be treated as one,'' reflects Ilya Nikolayevich in Shaginian's novel. ``But millions of children, a sea of humanity, are left without a school, without a mentor, unlettered, to be trampled underfoot like blades of grass in the field... Ignorance shortens life!''
' These anguished words speak volumes about the kind of man Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov was. An archetypal Russian intellectual, he acquired an education through inhuman effort to rise from a background of poverty to the heights of culture. He was a deeply humane, scrupulous man of sterling moral qualities which are amply illustrated in the novels showing his relationships with his pupils, relatives and all people. The author notes Ilya Nikolayevich's tact and consideration for other people, qualities that are more rare than talent, she writes. Ilya Nikolayevich had a gift of being almost physically aware of another's being, and was sensitive to people's character, nature and moods. He genuinely regarded them as equals, which is the hallmark of delicacy.
Such was the spirit of this family.
The atmosphere of humanity and a desire to do good that prevailed in the Ulyanov family-is evoked not only in Shaginian's chronicle novels but also in Zoya Voskresenskaya's The Heart oj a Mother. These books, for all their difference of mood and approach, are mutually complementary. While Shaginian's novels focus on Ilya Nikolayevich, Voskresenskaya's 21 book is devoted to the mother of Lenin, as suggested by the subtitle, ``Episodes from the Life of Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova''. It is a book about the self-sacrificing life of a Russian woman who, Z. Voskresenskaya writes, was not a member of a revolutionary organisation but had brought up her children as revolutionaries and towards the end of her life came to share their views and stood by them.
The Heart of a Mother relates episodes from the long life of Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (she died at 81), a life devoted to bringing up her children.
The task she nad set herself seemed to be modest: to bring up the children to be truthful, honest and just. But at the end of the day, the Ulyanov brothers and sisters had become revolutionaries because of the civic consciousness and high moral standards to which they had been brought up.
The book's best novellas, which include ``The New House'', ``Winter Evening" and ``Karpey'', reproduce the healthy atmosphere in the Ulyanov family with its' cult of honesty, tact, mutual good will and respect for work and working people. Zoya Voskresenskaya shows how this atmosphere of moral purity and humanity naturally and inevitably fostered a loathing of any injustice, a quality that forms the basis of civic consciousness. That sense is sharpened by a child's first exposure to the realities of the Russia of autocracy. The impressionable young heart is stung be a meeting with a peasant boy (worn bast shoes, a long dusty kaftan and a sack dangling on his back) who has run away from home to the city to seek out ``the head teacher Ulyanov" because he wanted to go to school (``The Best Mark''). That boy had never held a book in his hand. ``Volodya was shaken. He was of the same age as Vanya and had already read a lot of books. And the boatman's son was excluded from that wonderful world... He was haunted by a vague sense of discontent and guilt before Vanya. Ilya Nikolayevich often told his children about the abject poverty and rigntlessness of the peasants. And now Volodya could hear it from the boy.''
Volodya was happy when Ilya Nikolayevich had arranged to have Vanya enrolled at a school. He helped him in his studies and in this way lived up to the spirit of good and justice that reigned in the Ulyanov family.
The story entitled ``The Letter" conveys the distress Maria Alexandrovna and the whole Ulyanov family felt when they 22 learnt that the elder son, Alexander, had been arrested as a state criminal. At first Maria Alexandrovna refused to believe it. ``Alexander is honest and noble, he is just in everything, he couldn't have committed a crime.'' Then she remembered one evening when Alexander, Anya and Volodya were reading poetry. They shook their clenched fists and repeated loudly and passionately, as if they were giving an oath.
...And till our dying hour
We'll hate the whip that flogs our land.
And she remembered saying to the children, ``Keep these words in your hearts.'' During the trial (the story called ``The Trial'')-the most terrible day of her life-it was brought home to her that there was an intimate link between Alexander's noble conscience and inner purity and the ``crime'' for which her intelligent and upright son was to be hanged. That final knowledge dawned upon her as she listened to her son's last words at the trial which were addressed not to the judges but to her and the young men and women who filled the streets surrounding the court building. Her son said that he had early developed a vague sense of discontent with the system and that his studies of social and economic sciences had reinforced his conviction that the existing system was abnormal and led him to translate into actions his dreams about freedom, equality and brotherhood.
``A dozen or so people will always be found among the Russians,'' Alexander Ulyanov told the court, ``who are so dedicated to their ideas and feel such a compassion for the suffering of their land that they would not think it a sacrifice to die for their cause.''
The fate of the elder brother determined the life path of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He picked up the torch of the struggle from nim: ``I shall work towards the same goal as you, but I shall search for a new way in order to win.''
The execution of her elder son, coming shortly after the death of her husband, marked the start of Maria Alexandrovna's trials and tribulations. Ever since that time, and until her last days, she was perpetually anxious about her children who answered the call of their hearts and minds and became revolutionaries. She followed them into exile, took parcels to them when they were in prison, helped them to hide from police and always had ready her black dress with a white collar, ``Mother's fine battle uniform,'' as her daughter, Anna Ilyinichna, called it.
23``That dress was not intended for social visits,'' writes Zoya Voskresenskaya, ``but for going to the police headquarters and to Governor-Generals. liach time one of her children got into trouble, mother launched a quiet but stubborn struggle. That dress knows how her heart fluttered and missed a beat when she heard the cold and cruel words: 'Your petition has been declined.' Often she heard the taunting, stinging remark: 'Your elder son was hanged.' But she never despaired and never gave up her efforts. Gripping the pen with her delicate fingers, she wrote more and more appeals, couched in the formulas of the day: 'Dear sir, I humbly beg to petition you...' Many such appeals are to be found in the archives of the Tsarist police. Many was the time when Mother on coming home from an office, tucked away a tear-sodden handkerchief into a deep pocket in her dress...''
Maria Alexandrovna survived nineteen arrests of her children.
Zoya Voskresenskaya shows in her book how mother passed through the great school of revolutionary struggles together with her children. She had come to believe in the cause for the sake of which they had spurned comfortable life and preferred jail and exile. It would be naive to believe that Maria Alexandrovna had been influenced by Marxist literature. She was guided by her sensitive, loving and unerring mother's heart. She was instinctively aware that her children's cause was morally right and accorded with the spirit of active kindness, honesty and justice in which she had brought up her children, the spirit fostered in the family by fiya Nikolayevich.
Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova had survived her husband by many years. But her life and the spiritual rapport with her children which remained until her last days, give us new insights into the character of Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov as portrayed in the novels of Marietta Shaginian, and go a long way to explain the characters of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his brothers and sisters. The spirituality of Ilya Nikolayevich, which he imparted to his family, was of a special kind. He was an honest, enthusiastic, hard-working man. This showed above all in his attitude towards his educational work which he regarded as his civic duty. This determined the character of Ilya Nikolayevich and the moral atmosphere of the Ulyanov family.
Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, with his bald patch and very 24 kindly eyes struck you as ``an easy-going man and an obliging colleague,'' writes Marietta Shaginian, ``as a kind of starry-eyed enthusiast gullible as a child'', ``a simple sort who usually pulls more than his share of the weight and never grumbles".
But that impression was deceptive, writes Shaginian. Gentle and soft ne certainly was. He was undoubtedly an enthusiast, and it was not difficult to gradually shift an the school administration chores on him as he was the last man to shirk responsibility. But beyond that he was not a man to be bullied. For all his apparent softness, Ilva Nikolayevich was difficult for the authorities. Nor was he an ``idealistic carp" of Saltykov-Shchednn's famous story of the same title. Before he had served several months in his new post in Simbirsk, his colleagues became aware, from his character and activity, ``of a firm basis, of something unwonted that made him different from their own kincr. That became clear, writes Marietta Shaginian, from the very first measure introduced by Ulyanov. Shortly upon his arrival, having looked into the school situation, Ilya Nikolayevich ordered corporal punishment to be abandoned in all the districts within his jurisdiction. When he followed up that order by regular visits of inspection to all the schools he invariably checked whether the order was being fulfilled and was very particular lest teachers punish children by making them kneel, a custom he described as barbarous.
``Everything the new inspector of schools began to do in the gubernia was, from the early days, a linik in a wellthought-out chain which had no breaks in it,'' wrote Marietta Shaginian. She documents and describes Ilya Nikolayevich's valiant efforts to improve public education and to breech the massive wall of ignorance and superstition, misery, squalor, and endless insults by the Tsar's lieutenants who held sway in the land.
His service in Simbirsk was a veritable battle. This battle showed Ulyanov, a soft and gentle man who looked as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, to be a flinty, methodical, convinced and ufficient man. The battle was for the hearts of the peasants, especially the Chuvash minority peasants. Also tor wherewithal to finance public education, build schools and purchase school plant and furnishings which the government and the zemsti>o assemblies withheld. And then there was a challenge of educating a new kind of 25 public teacher. To get the idea of'schools off the ground, it was necessary to have teachers, dozens of them, who were not only versed in modern methods of teaching, but had practical knowledge of how, say, to build a school, furnish the class-rooms. Most important of all, they had to be eager to ``go to the people" in order to enlighten the peasantry. Shaginian's novels show how inspector Ulyanov ``seemed to sow and cultivate" such men around him; how all the ``honestly thinking brains" among the teaching community felt drawn to him and how tactfully and carefully he fostered the ``wonderful people's teachers who later came to be referred to, with respect, as the `Ulyanov men'".
The new kind of public teacher had to be civic-minded and morally impeccable. Shaginian has done much research to show that the whole life of Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, not only in Simbirsk but also in Nizhny Novgorod, was a crusade for advanced pedagogical principles. It was courageous daily struggle which he waged together with his ke-thinking friends.
Shaginian has discovered the minutes of the Joint Pedagogical Council which comprised teachers from the Nizhny Novgorod Gymnasium and the Institute for the Nobility, and from these she reconstructed the views of Ulyanov and his followers which, the writer notes, assumed more definite shape from one meeting to the next. This is also true of the opponents of his ideas. That group, writes Shaginian, summing up the debates, ``was pulling the school backward to what was familiar and tried, ana hated to see schoolchildren taught to think, and read independently and critically, hence, to extend their intellectual range, something the group regarded as forbidden and dangerous''. As seen from the minutes, Ulyanov and his friends challenged that approach and wanted to bring up a generation that ``is conscious and educated, has a critical grasp of history, meeting the demands of the epoch and capable of advancing it''.
Many members of the group of progressive intellectuals were influenced by Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, as Marietta Shaginian attests: ``Copies of Sovremennik and Russkcye Slovo were passed from hand to hand until they were banned, and one might say that the whole generation was brought up on progressive journalism of St. Petersburg. Ulyanov's character was held in high esteem by that group who set great store by his articulate, bold and well-reasoned 26 pronouncements which were hard to challenge and well-nigh impossible to refute.''
Such was the father of Vladimir Lenin, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, a Russian teacher, educationist, mentor and enlightener for whom teaching was both vocation and avocation, service to his people and his country, self-sacrificing labour in the name of justice, truth and good.
It is furthest from Shaginian's intentions to ``update'' and glamourise Ulyanov's character and present him as a follower of the revolutionary democrats (Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev). She makes a point of stressing that Ilya Nikolayevich was not a revolutionary. He was a ``peaceful worker" and a deeply religious man. But the writer notes, with good reason, that ``the eternal worker" was ``the people's own flesh and blood''. He was that in his background: he remembered to his last days his father's old craggy fingers with numerous traces of needle-pricks, the fingers of an Astrakhan tailor who was only able to extricate himself from poverty when he was sixty.
But Ilya Nikolayevich was a man of the people not only in his background. His love of the people, his noble soul and civic conscience led him to identify himself with the people's destiny.
Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov was a true Russian intellectual whose views were leavened with democratic ideas that were abroad in Russia beginning from the 1860s. That is how he appears in Shaginian's books and she claims considerable credit for having perceived him in this way.
The word ``intelligentsia'' was coined in Russia and borrowed by English and French. Education and intellectualism were not the only qualities that constituted the social phenomenon of Russian democratic intelligentsia. Even more important were the moral qualities and spirituality that made them identify themselves with the life and destiny of the people and serve the people with dedication and self-sacrifice.
The best of the intelligentsia who rose from humble backgrounds by sweat and hard work regarded education, science and knowledge not as ends in themselves but as a means to civic and moral development of the individual, not as a means to further selfseeldng ends and material gain, but a means to repaying many times over the debt to the people and to serve that people selflessly.
One became a member of the intelligentsia gradually as 27 one developed civic awareness and conscience under the influence ofknowledge, education and life experience.
The following lines from Historical Letters of the Russian revolutionary Narodnik Lavrov most accurately sum up the credo of the best representatives of that civilised minority. They sounded like a gospel for the Russian democratic intelligentsia: ``Every comfort in life that I enjoy and every thought I had the leisure to acquire or develop, has been bought by the blood, suffering and work of millions. I cannot undo the past, and, no matter how dearly my education has been paid for, I cannot give it up: it provides the ideal that impels me to activity. Only an impotent or backward man falls under the weight of responsibility that lies on him, or seeks escape from evil in a hermitage or in the grave. Evil must be rectified as far as possible, and that can only be done in life. Evil must be lived down. I would absolve myself of responsibility for the bloody price of my education if I use that education in order to reduce evil in the present and future...''
Marietta Shaginian quotes these lines on two occasions rightly regarding them as extremely important for understanding the trends in the ethical thought of Russian society in the 1860s and 1870s. And conversely, a general picture of Russian life, and insight into the social and moral issues of the time are essential for understanding and explaining the character of Ulya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, one of the best representatives of Russian democratic intelligentsia of his time.
Marietta Shaginian's books are not only a chronicle of the Ulyanov family. They offer social and historical comment. The social atmosphere of Russian life in the 60s and 70s that fills the pages of both books of Shaginian, are not just a historical backdrop but the natural environment and salutary air of the epoch that shaped the character of Lenin's father.
From the first pages of The Ulyanov Family the reader finds himself immersed in the turbulent events of the famous 1860s. The peasant revolt in Bezdna, unrest in the Penza province, riots in the Volga area, and the passionate preachings of Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Herzen and Pisarev-all send powerful currents through the life of the Penza Institute of the Nobility where Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov teaches physics.
28The students pass around a battered soiled copy of the Sovremennik magazine with a dog-eared cover.
In a lyrical digression prompted by the description of young people reading Sovremennik and Chernyshevsky, Marietta Shaginian rinds precise and pithy words to express something of fundamental importance to her.
She writes: ``Can any of us, living in a different epoch, remember the first and crucial exposure to a book that was destined to change our whole lives? A lump forms in your throat and you gasp for breath. You do not see the particulars. Your past habits and thoughts, sometimes very unlike what you are reading, might never have existed. You do not criticise, on the contrary, you feel an immediate need to speak at the top of your breaking, youthful voice, with utter faith and unbelievable aplomb. You want to talk and talk without listening to and despising any objections, to talk about something that has in an instant become an immutable truth for you. Now, that most natural and purest moment in a human life,---as if a dried husk bursts open to yield ripe grains---is the instant you become a mature citizen."
This was the effect on Russian youth of reading the Sovremennik, Riaskoye Slovo and later the Otecbestvenniye Zapiski.
The death of Dobrolyubov, which ``shook Ilya Nikolayevich'', the arrest of Chernyshevsky, the shot of Karakozov at Alexander II, which provoked a massive wave of reaction, the early heated debates of the future Narodniks on the eve of 1873, the year when they would first ``go to the people"---all these form integral elements of the novel.
This is not to suggest that Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov embraced the ideas of a revolutionary change towards which the writers in the Sovremennik were trying to incline Russia. He borrowed from the Sovremennik what was near to him.
``One must teach, bring the primer to the people... The good thing about Dobrolyubov is that he was an enlightener of the people...'' This was the reaction the Sovremennm's preachings drew from Ilya Nikolayevich.
Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev and the democratic publicists of the 1870s brought up revolutionary-minded people. This was the eventual, though not the only result of their activity.
Their impassioned preaching together with the powerful voice of the Russian literature shaped the morality of a whole stratum of raznocbintsy (intellectuals from non-gentry classes), 29 the democratic enlighteners of the latter half of the 19th century to whom Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov belonged. Their efforts were largely responsible tor ``a mounting wave of interest in the people" and a worshipful and self-sacrificing attitude towards it. It was due to them that democratic sentiments and morality gained authority and became prevalent in the land. Although the democratic intellectuals of the time differed in their conception of duty before the people-with some seeking to enlighten the people, others ``going to the people" to rouse them for the revolution, others again preaching the need for a violent upheaval, an uprising, believing that the nation was ripe for it-they shared ``a feeling of being in debt to the people''. That iccling provided the basis for the moral and highly spiritual qualities of the Russian intelligentsia.
It will be seen that the novels ot Marietta Shaginian have implications and meaning far beyond the main subject proclaimed in the title of the first of these novels, The Ulyanov Family. The author had set out to show that Lenin was a natural heir to his great predecessors, the leaders and teachers of the progressive Russian intelligentsia of the past century, and to reveal the profound roots of Lenin in Russia.
Lenin himself attested that before he read Marx, Engels and Plekhanov, the major influence on him had Chernyshevsky, especially his novel What Is to Be Done?. `` Chernyshevsky's great service has been,'' wrote Lenin, ``not only to show that every right-thinking and decent person must become a revolutionary, but also, and even more important, to show what a revolutionary should be like, what rules he should follow, how he should advance towards his goal and what methods and means he should use to carry it into practice.''
The artistic truth of Marietta Shaginian's books convinces us that the Revolution and Lenin were natural and logical for Russia.
The novels explore the social prerequisites for that: the plight of the working masses, the failure of the democrats and enlighteners to resolve the fundamental contradictions of Russian life compounded by the vigorous and aggressive development of Russia's young capitalism.
The First All-Russia Industrial Exhibition in Moscow, which gave the title to and propels the plot of the second novel, 30 including Ilya Ulyanov's arrival at the exhibition, enabled the writer to show the burgeoining of capitalism in Russia triggered by the reforms of the 60s.
But her main task was to trace the moral roots of Lenin and Leninism in Russia. It is with this end in view that she delves in documents to glean the character of Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, and draws an artistic portrait of the Russian democratic intelligentsia and the spiritual atmosphere of its genesis.
Marietta Shaginian goes about her task in keeping with the spirit of Lenin's work, notably, Lenin's attitude to cultural and moral values, the heritage of the democrats and enlighteners and a deeply-felt respect for ``such forerunners of the Russian Social-Democrats as Herzen, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and the galaxy of the revolutionaries of the 1870s''; and Lenin's idea about the world significance of Russian literature.
The Ulyanov Family and The First All-Russia Exhibition are intimately linked with Shaginian's other works devoted to Lenin himself: Learning from Lenin, Retracing Lenin's Steps, In the Library of the British Museum and Christmas at Sorrento, the documentary essays brought together under the common title Retracing Lenin's Steps. These provide an excellent sequel to the formidable achievement of The Ulyanov Family and The First All-Russia Exhibition and are free of some of the drawbacks of the author's earlier novels stemming mostly from the fictionalisation of events which at times slows down the pace of the narrative. Paradoxical though it may seem, the fictional elements-the story, say, of the young intellectual Fyodor Ivanovich and his relations with the socialist, Georges Ferrer, and the Narodnik girl Lenochka with whom he was in love-designed to make the book more readable, actually resulted in some of the more didactic pages. The effect of fictionalising proved to be counter-productive.
It looks as if the genre of historical novel did not give enough room for what Shaginian described as her ``thirst for research'', and in her works about Lenin she dispensed with the fictional element altogether. In the essay Christmas at Sorrento she had this to say about the change of heart she had experienced:
``The reader might have or, most probably, like myself, might have not, noted the fact that in working on the theme of Lenin, I thought and lived in the past, in that 31 recession of time which we writers regard from a historical vantage. To adopt such a view is to absent oneself from the covered time (or, to be more exact, to feel that one personally is not present).'' She followed the rules of the Historical novel when she was writing The Ufyanov Family and The First All-Russia Exhibition. But there exists, apart from the novel, ``the genre which is known as memoirs and which we could well be justified in terming historical since it treats of past happenings. And yet no memoirs can be written from a historical vantage, because they inevitably revolve around the living person who writes them, and whatever facts are presented nave that personal flavour which makes them not historical data but the facts of life.''
This was Shaginian's approach when she wrote Retracing Lenin's Steps although it is not a book of memoirs but something difficult to define in terms of genre. The fact of the matter is that Shaginian ``had failed to see" Lenin, that ``short, plain-looking man ... the greatest man of his epoch''. She seeks to gain insight into Lenin partly by `` retracing his steps" and revisiting the places he went to in Italy or in London, but mostly by reading things written by and about him and looking at Lenin's relations with other people, for example with Gorky (Christmas at Sorrento). Shaginian's writings about Lenin are a unique blend of an essay marked by her characteristically keen observation, and reflections about Lenin, life and herself; it is less a profile of Lenin than a lyrical, philosophical and journalistic attempt to understand him, and the authoress proceeds by way of spontaneous, often unpredictable associations which revolve aroung herself.
There is much in Shaginian's book that makes it akin in spirit and genre to Valentin Katayev's story ``A Little Iron Door in the Wall''. The difference between them is that with Katayev, it is the visual element and with Shaginian the analytical element that prevails.
``The Lenin theme is vast, and the book is neither a historical essay, nor a novel, nor even a story. It is a book of reflections, travel notes and reminiscences. In fact, it is a lyrical diary, no more, but no less.'' This is how Katayev defines the original genre in which the personality of tlitwriter, and his perception of Lenin as his contemporary torni the axis around which the narrative revolves.
Both the lyrical diary of Valentin Katayev and the lyrical 32 diary of Marietta Shaginian have been prompted by visits to places associated with Lenin. Katayev takes a walk Lenin might well have taken from Marie Rose Street to the National Library in Paris, and Shaginian retraces Lenin's steps from the street where he lived in London to the British Museum. Katayev follows Lenin to the Party school at Longjumeau and to the places Gorky lived in on Capri while Shaginian goes to Italy and the French coast in search of the little house in whidi Lenin took a rest in the summer of 1910. And she finds it by ``asking common people which, I am convinced, is the only right way to identify Lenin's path''. The itineraries chosen by the two writers are different, and so are their lives and individualities. But while they do not repeat each other, there is something in common. They share a lyrical, deeply involved philosophical and personal approach to the Lenin theme. They nave the same ``key'' to understanding Lenin. ``The key is love,'' writes Marietta Shaginian. Love for Lenin and the feeling of responsibility that goes with it.
Every genuine writer undertaking to write about Lenin tries to remove from his eyes what Shaginian calls ``a cataract on the crystal'', to free oneself of cliches and stereotypes in order to see an authentic, ``living Lenin".
Marietta Shaginian has her own view of Lenin. She looks searchingly at the whole Lenin, man and leader, and she is most attracted by the towering personality ot Lenin and his moral essence.
Humanity, consideration and kindness are the hallmarks of Lenin's character.
Shaginian stresses that she was led in her researches by ``some warm traces of Lenin, his personality, his cause" the memory of which ``must be extant among the people''. She is aware that his warmth, humanity and Kindness have a special quality about them. They are active humanity and kindness, and, moreover, socially active humanity and kindness.
``There is more to this than to • our ordinary old idea of kindness,'' she wrote in the essay ``Learning from Lenin'', ``and the love with which people repaid Lenin, their affection for him is immeasurably greater than any ordinary affection inspired by common goodness.''
Lenin translated his love for the people into action and revolutionary struggle for their happiness. This is the __PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 2---835 33 hallmark of Lenin's morality, the highest morality of a human being and citizen.
These are the spiritual attributes of Lenin as seen by Marietta Shaginian, the same qualities she celebrated in her novels about Lenin's father and the democratic Russian intelligentsia of the second half of the 19th century who regarded serving the people to be ``the bidding of the national conscience and the main cause of any progressive Russian''. Lenin brought new qualities to civic-mindedness, that great gain of the Russian revolutionaries of the 19th century. These qualities were effectiveness, complete confidence of early victory and scientific methods of struggle. ``...I cannot imagine him without this beautiful dream ofthe future happiness for all mankind, of a bright joyous life,'' wrote Maxim Gorky about Lenin's high moral sense. ``Lenin is more human than any one else of my contemporaries, and although his mind is certainly occupied chiefly oy considerations of politics, which a romanticist would call narrowly practical, still I am sure that in rare moments of leisure that fighter-mind of his is carried away into a beautiful future, where it sees much more than I could ever imagine. The chief aim of Lenin's whole life is the good of all mankind, and he must inevitably foresee in the distance of coming ages the end of that grand process whose beginning his whole will is ascetically and courageously serving.''
This quotation from Gorky's article ``Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" published in 1920 in Communist International, takes the key place in Shaginian's essay. Published as it was during the lifetime of Lenin, a man of great modesty, the article angered Lenin and even prompted the Central Committee of the Party to note that such articles are inappropriate and should not henceforth be published in the magazine. But three weeks before Lenin's death his wife Krupskaya wrote to Gorky: ``Ilyich asked me to read the article to him. When I read it to him, he followed it with the closest attention...'' Six years later Krupskaya recalled the scene again in a letter to Gorky: ``I can still see Ilyich's face as he listened and looked out of the window, far into the distance-- summing up his life and thinking about you...''
Why did Lenin, crippled by disease and no longer able to speak or read, want to listen ``to a long-forgotten and at the time it was written greatly infuriating article by 34 Gorky?" asks Shaginian. ``Surely what prompted him was not the need to bask, when parting from life, in a warm wave of plaudits. Or did he wish to verify for himself if his indignation at the time the article appeared was justified?''
One cannot know for sure what he felt at the moment, writes Shaginian, but it seems to her, in fact she is confident that this last communication with Gorky before his death, one of the last wishes of Lenin, was prompted by his need, before eternal rest, before sinking into non-being, to look back on himself, to think about his past of a man who thought, fought, suffered and loved.
She describes that episode lovingly and thoughtfully and justly laments the way ``we should fight shy of everything in Lenin's life which has a homely human touch and should put an impenetrable curtain over that very window looking 'far into the distance' into which Lenin the man had gazed before he departed from his life".
Lenin listens to Gorky's lines: ``The chief aim of Lenin's whole life is the good of all mankind, and he must inevitably foresee in the distance of corning ages the end of that grand process whose beginning his whole will is ascetically and courageously serving...'', and the authoress seems to see how a faint smile touches the corners of his lips. It even seems to her---``I now enter the domain of conjecture'', she hastens to make the reservation---that Lenin is saying in his mind his expressive ``hem ... hem''. ``~`Ascetically and courageously,' Gorky had written committing a strictly formal error, for asceticism is incompatible with courage; an escape from life is cowardly, not courageous. And factually erringfor Lenin was never an ascetic. He was a fighter.''
While she subscribes to Gorky's understanding of what made Lenin's character tick ('The chief aim of Lenin's whole life is the good of all mankind'') Shaginian takes issue with Gorky who attributes asceticism to him. Lenin hated asceticism, she asserts, he was passionately in love with life. He had experienced richly satisfying personal love. And even about Marx and Engels he wrote with passion: ``I am still `in love' with Marx and Engels, and cannot calmly stand any abuse of them.''
``Lenin's life had been rich and encompassing, not ascetic. It had been a life of self-denial in many ways, perhaps, of 'renunciation' ... renunciation of the personal for 35 the sake of the people's happiness, a life of supreme dedication, of the deepest commitment.''
This puts in a nutshell the ethos and meaning of Lenin's life. This was the core of Lenin's personality. One cannot fail to see the similarity between this understanding of the meaning of life and that of the self-denying democrats, a milieu to which belonged his father, IlyaNikolayevich Ulyanov,. and from which Lenin himself had risen. Having looked at the past and the sources of Lenin's moral attitudes, let us now look ahead and consider Lenin's conception of communist morality.
Rejecting morality that is divorced from real human society, Lenin said at the Third All-Russia Congress of the Young Communist League: ``...morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, a communist society.'' And continued: ``Communist morality is based on the struggle for the consolidation and completion of communism.''
On the face of it, that definition of morality may strike one as a little utilitarian. But on closer inspection one finds that these crisp words encompass and interpret the whole moral and spiritual experience of the Russian revolution whose morality started, not with precepts and commandments, but with a self-denying service of the individual to the common good, the good of the working people. That alone made a human being spiritual and moral in the true sense. And because history has irrefutably identified the notion of universal human good (the aim and meaning of a moral individual's life) with existing humanism, that is with communism, Lenin was convinced that only that person is moral who regards ``the struggle for the consolidation and completion of communism" to be the meaning of his life.
Lenin's conception of morality had been arrived at through his own arduous experience and that of his party's struggle. And not only that. It had its roots in the suffering and struggles of the whole Russian revolution starting from Radisnchev, through the Decembrists and Herzen. It was a natural outgrowth of Russian life, past and present.
Marietta Shaginian is very much aware of the fact that if one is to grasp Lenin's personality, one cannot isolate him from history, the preceding work of the human spirit which was crowned with Marxism.
36The scope of Lenin's spirit was due to his outstanding qualities as a citizen and intellectual, for he was at once a great revolutionary, who dedicated his whole life to improving the lot of men, and great thinker.
``Lenin was a great dialectician who abhorred stagnancy and above all the stagnant lifeless word,'' writes Marietta Shaginian. ``We shall do well to grasp and remember his astute remarks in a letter to Inessa Armand:
`` 'People for the most part (99 per cent of the bourgeoisie, 98 per cent of the liquidators, about 60--70 per cent of the Bolsheviks) don't know how to think, they only learn words by heart. They've learnt the word ``underground''. Firmly. They can repeat it. They know it by heart.
`` 'But bow to change its forms in a new situation, how to learn and think anew for this purpose, this we do not understand.'"
In the essay ``In the Library of the British Museum" Marietta Shaginian introduces the reader to the laboratory of Lenin's mind and tries to understand Lenin's attitude to reason, knowledge and intellectual values.
``Anyone who wishes to fathom Lenin as a person, to get a feel of his character, cannot help thinking deeply of the part played by libraries in Lenin's nighly complex life,'' writes Marietta Shaginian.
Lenin's approach to reading, Shaginian believes, is indicative of the deep respect he felt for ``thousands of years of human thought'', culture, knowledge and artistic and intellectual values.
That idea is prominent in her documentary lyrical story Christmas at Sorrento, which this writer believes, is the best of Shaginian's writings about Lenin so far. That story, a blend of publicistic writing, scholarly research and lyrical diary, probes into the complex, dramatic and noble relations between Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Lenin. And she tells about ``this singular sudden communion of these two great men by a whim of the memory when they were approaching death'', because just as Lenin thought of Gorky before his death, so ``the dying writer several times mentioned Lenin" as he lay dying, his doctor Speransky attests. Marietta Shaginian speaks frankly about the friendship between Lenin and Gorky which was anything but idyllic: she tells about the mistakes of Gorky which put him in the camp of Lenin's opponents on more than one occasion, quotes Gorky saying, at a moment 37 of weariness and irritation, ``I am not a Marxist''; and Speaks about Lenin's stern and unsparing criticism of Gorky for his inconsistencies.
``I could see him fume and rage with all the force of his sanguine nature, but I could not see him invoke harm on Gorky, lose his affection for him,'' writes Shaginian.
Why was Lenin so attached to Gorky? she asks. The answer is, she writes, that ``Lenin not only forgave Gorky, guided and admonished him, like a father a son, but ne also loved Gorky, and therein is the answer to the riddle of their relationship and friendship... He loved Gorky because he needed him vitally... It would DC a mistake to think that in this correspondence with him Lenin alone guided Gorky and that there was a one-sided need on the part of Gorky for Lenin. When one weighs every .word of their letters, one begins to realise how indispensable the floundering, recalcitrant, obdurate and impressionable Gorky was to Lenin, who .sharpened his thoughts on the whetstone of their friendship, of the answers coming from such a very different, utterly unaccommodating person. The politician needed the artist, needed him like the air he breathed, like bread, like the right leg needs the left.''
A very keen observation! It has been prompted by Lenin's fundamental attitude to literature and artistic values which, he was convinced, should belong to the people, and, as Shaginian writes, ``have its deepest roots in the thick of the working masses'', ``unite the sentiments, thoughts and will of the masses and lift them'', ``awaken the artists in them and develop them".
This view of literature and the arts and their great role in humanising man and building a new society is inherent in Lenin's profound and catholic respect for the millenniaof the work of the human spirit, talent, and intellect. That respect is cast in his clear-cut formula: 'You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind.''
On the question of the tasks facing youth in the early post-Revolutionary years, Lenin said: ``...the tasks of the youth in general ... might be summed up in a single word: learn.''
The Civil War still echoed through the land which was plagued by economic dislocation, hunger and poverty when Lenin launched his passionate call to the youth at the Third 38 All-Russia Congress of the Young Communist League: ``Learn''. Lenin's speech ``The Tasks ofthe Youth Leagues" was a hymn to reason, science and knowledge which must at long last be placed in the service of the working people building a new society.
His speech was a blueprint for the youth activities that is relevant to this day and repudiated those petty-bourgeois sectarian pseudo-revolutionaries who were thinking of a proletarian revolutionary culture as of something ``clutched out of thin air''. In upholding ``everything of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture'', Lenin maintained that socialist society needed ``not the invention of a new proletarian culture, but the development of the best models, traditions and results of the existing culture, from the point of view of the Marxist world outlook and the conditions of life and struggle of the proletariat in the period of its dictatorship".
Intolerance of smug nihilism with regard to culture, intelligentsia, science and knowledge, with regard to spiritual, moral and intellectual values was more than a well-- tnoughtout and consistent policy. It derived also from Lenin's personality. Lenin's grandeur of spirit stemmed, not only from his dedicated work for the Revolution and for the good of mankind, but also from his vast knowledge and his, powerful intellect polished by his encyclopaedic education. That too made him a son of his times, an heir and successor to the noble traditions of advanced Russian intellectuals, democratic Russian culture and our great enlightenment movement.
An artist and scholar, Marietta Shaginian follows Lenin from the British Museum library where he worked diligently for months, to his first political battles for a revolutionary Marxist party in Russia, and in particular his battle against the Economists.
To Shaginian, analysis of Lenin's fight against Economism is not an end in itself. She makes this penetrating observation: ``A particular but in no way conspicuous feature of Lenin's works, in my opinion, is the dialectical relation of the entities of time and place, that is, a factor which is purely historical, which cannot be ascribed or applied 'to some different time or place without distortion of its sense, on the one hand, and, on the other, the factor of the infallibly true, the supremely unerring, which remains true and correct in its application to any time period or place."
39The reason why she turns to Lenin's struggle against Economism and to nis book What Is to Be Done? is this: she is interested, not so much in Lenin's handling of practical revolutionary tasks but in ``the actual course of Lenin's reasoning and the peculiar features of his battle for theory'', that is, what ``remains true and correct in its application to any time period or place".
Marietta Shaginian rightly believes that in doing so she is serving a timely reminder. Recalling the sacred time of her youth and the 1920s, the years when youth and people of her age had a profound interest in theory, she writes, ``Theory had a special beauty and fascination for us. It was the fire that consumed our nearts in the colleges and workers' faculties, and the special schools, like the Planning Academy, which I entered to re-educate myself. To me the second volume of Marx's Capital had an exquisite musical charm. It captivated me in the evenings as no other delight of art could have done. Dialectical materialism in the Circulation of Capital possessed the artistic spell of a Bach fugue... It is with painful regret that one notes how remote from so many young people of our own day is the intoxicating delight in human thought!''
The writer believes that this is not entirely their own fault and that ``...we ourselves are partly to blame. Teaching people to think in a new way, revealing to them the infinite wealth of Lenin's ideas, is a task requiring true proficiency and fervour. There are times when theory, all theory, grows moribund, dries into dogma, turns from a forceful and vigorous teaching into a callous catechism; there are times when a mechanical, unintelligent and indifferent, blind and arrogant approach to theory, seen as an instrument for deterring thought, evokes a violent reaction from the people and above all young people- against all and any theory, in support of the spontaneous 'inner urge'. For us in Russia the temptations of the 'inner urge' had always been pretty strong.''
Marietta Shaginian takes great pains to show how co' nsistently Lenin urged the need for active, questing thought, and how he promoted respect for books and learning.
She reminds us that in his polemic with the advocates of spontaneity and ``inner urge'', Lenin never tired of repeating that the theory of socialism had not been engendered by spontaneous revolutionary movement, that socialism had 40 been introduced into that movement from outside, and not by workers but by thinking-and Lenin did not hesitate to say-``bourgeois'' intelligentsia, for no other kind existed at the time.
He wrote: ``The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status, the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.''
This profound understanding enabled Shaginian in her chronicle novels and recent essays to describe m an authentic and well-documented manner the historical background to Lenin's genius and, most important, to make us aware of the real scope of Lenin's great personality.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 3The most successful modern writing about Lenin has been strictly documentary publicistic prose lyrical in tone. Not only Retracing Lenin's Steps by Shaginian and ``The Little Iron Door in the Wall" by Katayev, but also the Daytime Stars by Olga Bergholtz, Dried Pieces of Rye Bread and Ballad of the Bolshevik Underground by Yelizayeta Drabkina all pivot around a living human self which immediately transforms the facts of history into facts of life.
Dried Pieces of Rye Bread by Drabkina is a book of sketches, essays, novellas and lyrical reflections joined together by the theme of Revolution and Lenin.
Lenin makes his appearance in the book on a momentous day of June 3, 1917, when the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opened.
Emmanuel Kazakevich and Zoya Voskresenskaya in their books cover the time shortly after the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets when Lenin had to go into hiding on Lake Razliv, when he urged the need of an armed uprising and later prepared and led it.
41Dried Pieces of Rye Bread shows Lenin in October 1917 when he emerged from hiding to take charge of the preparations for the uprising. Drabkina carries the story of the Revolution and Lenin further unti) the May Day ot 1919 when Lenin concluded his speech with the words ``Long Live Communism!" In that speech he summed up the past and looked towards the future, to a new world which he discerned.
Marx referred to communism as real humanism.
Lenin translated it into its highest form: socialist consciousness, revolutionary will, creative efforts of the masses and the struggle for communism. To this he subordinated everything: feelings, reason and his whole life. The Lenin emerging from the pages of Drabkina's book is fiercely single-minded of purpose, intolerant of laxity, spinelessness, sloppiness and lack of organisation, in short, of all the things that impeded that struggle.
Lenin might listen seriously without a shadow of a smile to the Petrograd YCL'ers putting before him a fantastic project of digging a tunnel ``across the frontline into the rear positions of the Germans" and sending the ``most daring people" to call the German people to revolution, and then switch from that romantic talk to the workaday practical work of the Russian Young Communist League.
Drabkina shows Lenin in the daily practical work of organisation, the most difficult work of all. Perhaps the word ``shows'' is not quite accurate. Rather she shares with the reader her emotional visual perception of Lenin etched on her memory long ago when she listened to and met Lenin.
Lenin on the rostrum: ``There is will, energy and purpose in every gesture. And the whole audience ... fived with him identifying with his feelings and intense thought.''
Lenin chairing a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars: he conducts business with despatch, formulates decisions clearly and in between looks through papers and cables, writes replies to them, exchanges brief notes with those present to arrive at decisions ``as if he were conducting another meeting at the same time".
Lenin in conversation, usually with several people at once: quick pointed questions demanding clear and precise answers, followed by more questions.
His speech was amazingly expressive, Drabkina recalls, when he tackled fundamental problems that others thought impossible or unfeasible.
42``If he laughed he laughed, but when he was angry he was angry. No one was spared. His fury was usually aroused not by the actions of class enemies, for whom he had abiding hatred. His wrath was for the most part provoked by Soviet officials who displayed high-handed bureaucratic disregard for the needs of the common people and the revolutionary cause.''
This, then, is the portrait of Lenin that emerges from the pages of Drabkina's book: stern rather than benign, concentrated, purposeful and efficient, firm and strict. A doer rather than a talker, a man of colossal creative energy and drive, and of concentrated will. ``Everyone who met him,'' writes Drabkina, ``was aware of the strength he exuded.''
The book portrays not only Lenin but also the revolutionary people inspired by his call ``to do everything so that Russia cease to be humble and powerless and become powerful and abundant in the true sense of the word".^^1^^ Above all, one finds in the book the image of the young generation of the time, a generation of people who did not nesitate to die for the revolution. The young revolutionary soldiers, writes Drabkina, ``had cheeks hollow from hunger'', but ``their faces were full of determination and faith in their cause, and such readiness to win or die that it was clear that they would fight until last rather than retreat and open the patn for the enemy".
The Party people who carried out the revolution were amazingly young. The average age of the delegates to the Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. was twenty-nine.
From the first the image of the Communist came to be identified with the ideal of a person who has dedicated his life to enhancing the conditions of his people. To the working people the word ``Communist'' stood for honesty, courage, uprightness and commitment to the righteous cause.
Lenin was a paragon of communist morality. An essay entitled ``Reading Lenin" which forms part of B. Galin's book Builder of a New World has a brief episode called ``Boots and Suit . Let me quote it in full:
``The Republic was living on an austerity ration. Everything was rationed: bread, salt, boots, overcoats. Talking _-_-_
~^^1^^ A paraphrase of the words in the long poem Who Can Be Hapjiy in Russia? by Nikolai Nekrasov (1821--1877) whose work Lenin valued greatly. - Ed.
43 about boots and their price. On July .19, 1919 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin received a check 'for the goods sold and delivered to you', one pair of boots, one suit and one belt, to the total cost of one thousand four hundred and seventeen roubles and 75 kopecks.``That figure seemed suspiciously low to Lenin and he at once wrote a note to the suppliers:
``'I enclose 2,000 roubles (two thousand) and requestcategorically demand-to correct the check which is obviously too low.'"
This is but one in a thousand little incidents which testify not only to Lenin's modesty but to his scrupulous integrity in things large and small.
Drabkina's book has much to say about the high morality and selflessness of the revolutionary years. It is enough to recall the chapter about ``Dried Pieces of Rye Bread" that gave the book its title.
The Russian people, weary of war, economic dislocation, hunger and foreign military intervention, promptly responded to Lenin's letter calling on them to help the German proletarians who started a revolution in 1919, and they did not hesitate to share their bread with the German people. Bread came from all parts of the country, from hungry Petrograd, from the breadless Kostroma and from Yaroslavl which lay in ruins. Stocks of flour and grain were being set up at elevators and the people saved up and dried pieces of rye bread.
``Pieces of dried black bread,'' recalls Drabkina, ``were brought two or three at a time to the district Party and YCL committees, to trade unions and factory committees. Wrapped neatly in white cloth they were put carefully on the table so as not to waste a single precious crumb. There was human drama behind every such piece of bread.''
Russia, itself in the grip of hunger, sent fifty railway cars of this ``sacred bread" to help the working people of Germany.
But perhaps Drabkina best recaptures the spirit of the revolutionary times in her next book, entitled Ballad of the Bolshevik Underground. In the preface she writes that the title might at first raise a few eyebrows:
``'Ballad' is something poetic, 'Bolshevik' has to do with politics and 'underground conjures up tough struggle and hardship. How can all these things be linked together?''
44The writer believes they can. For ``the valiant political struggle waged by OUF Party was marked by high poetic quality, and was, for all the hardship and sacrifice, imbued with inexhaustible optimism''.
Ballad of the Bolshevik Underground is an original and highly poetic book which tells with passionate commitment about the deeds of the Leninist revolutionaries. ``As time goes on,'' writes Drabkina, ``Lenin and his associates tower igher and higher against the general background of human history, for they claim most of the credit for the victory of the Great October Revolution of 1917.''
We see that these people lived turbulent lives full of fervour, dangers and struggle. There was no end to the difficulties they had to overcome. On the surface, they led wretched lives of hunger and cold. But beneath that surface, writes Drabkina, there was great power and unbending will which made heroes of ordinary wqrkers and revolutionaries, heroes who swam against the current no matter how strong and irresistible it appeared.
They were highly individual people and their lives differed greatly. But for all the differences, they had many things in common: intelligence, talent, irrepressible energy, high moral standards, optimism, dauntless courage and boundless loyalty to the Party.
Trying to trace how the nation's best sons and daughters came to identify themselves with the Revolution, Drabkina writes about the childhood, youth and early revolutionary activities of the Leninist old guard. She shows that the social conflicts relentlessly led the high-minded honest citizens to embrace the idea of the Revolution, and describes that turning point in their thinking and moral attitudes, their ``second birth".
More often than not, the impetus came from a book, says Drabkina, and goes on to cite many interesting documents which tell how youth's thought was awakened and their destinies determined by Russian literary classics, articles by the revolutionary democratic critics and publicists and illegal Marxist literature.
The writer stresses that casting in their lot with the revolution was for them, not self-sacrifice, but true happiness. Their lives thereby became full of meaning and purpose. From then on they could not live differently if they were to enjoy a full human existence. That moulded the characters 45 of heroes: courage, readiness to fight, hatred for the enemy and loyalty to their class, Party and comrades.
She writes in detail about the arduous path of every revolutionary, about ``conspiracy, the science of clandestine revolutionary war'', about codes and secret addresses, arrests and exile, daring escapes from prisons and dungeons. She traces the heroic, often legendary lives of the revolutionaries such as Babushkin, Bauman, Sverdlov, Kirov, Frunze, Kamo, Sternberg, Artyom and many others.
One of the chapters, called ``The Ring of Fetters'', tells of the countless prisons, fortresses, ancT dungeons where revolutionaries languished.
``Prison was the inescapable lot of every revolutionary and every Bolshevik.'' The book cites some striking statistics. The 171 delegates who attended the Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. had between them survived five hundred and forty arrests, and had spent more than five hundred years in prison, exile or penal servitude. The life of underground Bolsrieviks was an endless chain of imprisonments and spells at illegal underground work, followed by prison and exile. It was a life full of privation and peril, an ascetic life of martyrdom.
For all that they were not ascetics, writes Drabkina, and human emotions of happiness and pain, tenderness and love were not alien to them.
The chapter ``Pages of Love" cites letters of the revolutionaries to their beloved, extracts from diaries which give us a glimpse of their pure souls and deep personal dramas, which inevitably lay in wait for underground lighters.
``The hangmen would not let us say goodbye to each other,'' reads part of the letter from Nikolai Evgrafovich Fedoseyey, a close friend of Lenin, to the woman he loved... ``A Russian's destiny is odd and cruel! It turns love into suffering when love is at its most beatiful and life is full...'' Fedoseyev and his bride never saw each other again, and both died in exile.
A life devoted to the revolution had to be one of restriction and self-denial. That was not easy. ``I am anything but ascetic,'' wrote Felix Dzerzhinsky (in a letter quoted in the book). ``...I would very much like to live a broad and varied human life. I would like to enjoy beauty in nature, my fellow men and their creations, admire them and improve myself because beauty and goodness are sisters. Asceticism that is my lot is alien to me.''
46And yet revolutionaries faced the severest of tests and brought the greatest human sacrifice. What impelled them? What made them forgo not only material comfort but often the happiness of love? The answer is offered by the words of Dzerzhinsky quoted in the book. He said that every person must since early youth ``hold something sacred in his soul... That sacred feeling is stronger than all other feelings, because it contains the moral bidding, 'You must live in this way and you must be this and not that'~".
[47] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL1__ Probing the Past __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1Contemporary Soviet literature is vigorously developing the tradition of historical-revolutionary prose which shows the romantic and noble ideals of the Revolution, fosters respect for civic convictions, moulds a communist world view and ideological awareness.
``We query and question the past in order that it should explain to us our present and give a hint about our future,'' wrote Belinsky, a leading Russian literary critic of the 19th century.
The explosion of popular interest in and awareness of history that has been a feature of recent years is a sign of the deepening self-awareness of society and the desire of the people to .better understand life and themselves. Literature has answered that call and responded to the demand of the reader who avidly devours documentary historical prose, as indeed any documentary prose.
Awareness of history and continuity of time is a salient feature of contemporary literature and has been most pronounced in Soviet prose and critical writings of recent years. Literary inquiry is becoming more intensive and wide-ranging, concentrating on two interconnected areas: the philosophy of man and the philosophy of history.
That is why today it is not enough to have a sense of history and be interested in history. The historical approach should underlie the critical and fictional writings about the contemporary life, the moral issues of our time, the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of life and man's place in life. Such an approach meets a deeply felt need of our epoch.
It can be said without exaggeration that the most passionate arguments among Soviet literary critics in the late 60s and early 70s raged over the question of what constitutes 48 loyalty to the historical approach and the spirit of the people. Starting from the discussion of prose about rural life, these arguments expanded to embrace new aspects and probed the essential conceptions of social, spiritual and moral values and our attitude to the heritage of the past.
The argument is still going on, but its focus has deepened and it has shifted increasingly to scholarship, theory and fiction.
Concern about the genuine values of national culture, the moral, ennobling and educational role of the study of native history and respect for the land of the ancestors have always been of prime importance for literature and the whole cultural life of society.
Consideration and respect for all the genuine values of the past have been bequeathed to us by Lenin who upheld the principle of continuity of the best of world and national culture against the nihilism of the ``ultra-revolutionary'', in fact, petty-bourgeois theoreticians.
But what should be considered to be the best, loftiest and most genuine elements of national tradition? In trying to answer that pivotal question one should proceed from the historical approach advocated by Lenin: one must consider every past phenomenon in historical terms and in the context of other phenomena, i.e., approach the past from a socialclass, historical-dialectical angle.
The need for serious and thoroughgoing study into the question of continuity of the best of national cultural traditions cannot be gainsaid. But doubts may arise when one takes a closer look at some of the concrete solutions offered to that important problem.
Any polemic is fraught with extremes, especially if for some reason or other emotions happen to prevail over reason and half-knowledge over knowledge. Even the lofty feeling of love for one's Motherland may, ifit is blind and unconscious, be harmful and impede rather than promote the country's development and prosperity. History in general, and Russian history in particular, offers many examples of misguided patriotism.
Respect for history does not mean blind devotion to the past. It implies respect also for historical truth and for what is called historicism. Pushkin in his day spoke disapprovingly about those ``who are often led by their love of country ... beyond strict justice''. When this happens, a dialectical view 49 of history is supplanted by a metaphysical one, solid historical knowledge by snaky half-baked ideas and genuine history by misinterpreted history.
In recent years a methodologically mature conception of history and the spirit of the people has prevailed in Soviet literary criticism.
This is apparent, not solely, or largely, in arguments about history and the spirit of the people, but in the actual creative process, in pur prose writing which has produced some epic works seeking to gain an insight into the destinies of the people who have carried out a revolution and built socialism. Such works provide the most convincing answer to some far-fetched speculations which replace affinity with the people and awareness of the country's historical destiny by attempts to revive and romanticise reactionary illusions or the remote past.
Books about the Revolution and the Great Patriotic War of 1941--1945 have been the most potent vehicles for asserting a mature and sound feeling of history and the people.
They fill a humanistic contemporary need, the need to take a closer look at the spiritual and moral values of Soviet man and Soviet society which manifested themselves at a time of mortal danger.
That need stems, it seems to me, from the most important feature of our life and literature, viz., the keen interest in the humanistic values which our literature interprets in a concrete social and historical context.
These features-sense of history, keen interest in the national cultural heritage and philosophical approach to man-had not yet moved into the forefront in the 50s and early 60s. At that time much of Soviet literature was coming to grips with shorter-term problems. Of course, without solving them it would have been unable to tackle the tasks of today. The short story and the novella were generally acknowledged to be the main genre at the time.
Since the late 60s the novel has been gaining new strength in Soviet literature. The novels for the most part have been of the social epic nature. That genre, which can be a vehicle for a philosophy of man and a philosophy of history at the same time, requires artistic maturity and is fraught with considerable difficulties.
What lies behind the revived interest in the social epic novel? It meets the spiritual demands of our time, of the 50 time of developed socialism when people feel a profound need to understand life and their place in it, to relate present-day reality with the ideals of the grandfathers and Fathers, to grasp the historical destiny of the people as it affects individual destinies.
Changes of genres always reflect changes of ideas. The markedly increased interest-in the epic novel genre is intimately linked with the deepened awareness of history and nation which has been characteristic of Soviet literature in recent years.
Georgi Markov's novel Siberia is set in the vast forestlands or Siberia before the Revolution and shows the life of the grassroots. Georgi Markov has thorough inside knowledge of the material. Having described the legendary land where he was born and reared in his novels The Strogovs, The Salt of the Earth and Father and Son, he now expands the study of his native Siberian land in time and space.
``Russian might will be multiplied by Siberia,'' said the great Russian scientist Lomonosov. The wisdom of these words has been vindicated by centuries of history.
``In these words about Siberia I hear first of all Lomonosov's patriotic pride in his people. More and more frequently I wonder: who, what social stratum is capable of raising the productive powers of Siberia, breathing life and activity to its expanses, and realising in actual fact that brilliant behest of Mikhailp Lomonosov?" Thus reflects a character in the novel Siberia, the Russian scientist and democrat, Venedict Petrpvich Likhachev, who devoted his life to the exploration of Siberia.
The novel shows convincingly how this man came to the same conclusion as the Russian scientist Ilya Mechnikoy. ``I toss and turn, I rack myself in thought,'' he put down in his diary, ``and however I look, I see only one force capable of undertaking that titanic work-the Party of Social-Democratic Bolsheviks. It has the brain, the valour, the boldness, and its roots go deep among the people, and therefore it is heir to the future.''
That conclusion is borne out, not only by the action of the novel, which takes place in 1916--1917, but by subsequent history, which gives to book relevance despite the fact that it describes pre-revolutionary times. What makes Georgi Markov's Siberia a modern novel is the approach to the object of portrayal, the scope and depth of the writer's 51 thought about the great land of Siberia and its people on the eve of the Great October Revolution.
The theme of Siberia looms large in Soviet literature, and its relevance is particularly great now that the whole world has its eyes trained on the giant storehouse of natural resources.
The time has come to develop these resources.
Markov's novel seems to say that Siberia, its vastness, its past, present and future, contain such potential, such unique human characters and powerful passions that literature, on the strength of its present record, should still feel indebted to that land.
The writer sees his novel as just one of the first attempts to repay that debt. The novel offers a sweeping and very modern view of Siberia at a particular historical juncture. An exhaustive treatment of such a vast and diverse theme, and of the great historic question of the destinies of Siberia, its past, present and future, can only be given by literature as a whole.
One must give credit to Georgi Markov for avoiding many snags that await a writer who attempts to solve the above problems. One of the main dangers is false romanticisation of Siberia as a ``Russian Klondike" which leads to the depiction of biological rather than social passions and of ``rough diamonds" placed in allegedly exceptional ``Siberian'' conditions. A false romantic view of the Siberian Russian peasant, to whom some superior wisdom is imputed, can be found in some novels about Siberia, obscuring and overshadowing the social essence of the characters and circumstances being described.
Georgi Markov has thorough knowledge and keen insight into the colourful folkways of Siberia that have taken shape over the centuries. But in addition to being able to convey the historical idiosyncrasies of that truly original life, he has a grasp of the profound social cleavages ana contradictions.
Some of .the best pages in the book depict the life of an old Siberian village and its people, powerful characters produced by centuries of unremitting toil. The writer has first-hand knowledge of the life and work of these people. ``When I am asked where I received my education as an artist I say that to me the primary school of life and art was the life of the hunters, and the campfire in the forest,'' he said.
52The fact that the writer has risen from the grassroots may in the final analysis account for the original conception of the novel Siberia. It contains different strands, and blends the authour's own experience with awareness of the modern currents and needs which are shaping the future of Siberia. It would be naive to assume that the author's message is confined to the statement of the need to develop the natural riches and tap the potential of that fabulously rich land.
The theme of nature, its riches and significance for man has a very contemporary ring in the novel. As the author sees it, the rich Siberian nature is not only an economic factor contributing to the nation's might, but also a moral factor that ennobles the human soul. A careful, thrifty attitude to nature displayed in the novel both by the locals, the hunter Stepan Lukianov and the settler Fedot Fedotovich, and by Professor Likhachev and his nephew, an exiled Bolshevik by the name of Ivan Akimov, is seen by the author as a natural manifestation of the work ethic, an inseparable part of the nation's soul. This is in stark contrast with the predatory attitude to nature and man characteristic of the world or property represented in the novel by the family of Epifan Knvorukov who in his unscrupulous drive for gain tramples underfoot human lives.
The basic relevance of Siberia to our own day stems from its underlying message that the communist etnic and morality, as proletarian culture as a whole, does not ``appear from nowhere'', to quote Lenin's words, and that Communists have come along as worthy heirs and successors to the humanistic attitudes to nature and man engendered in the thick of the masses over millennia of work and struggle.
The humanism of the working people's ethic is embodied in the novel's characters, among whom is old Mamika, who, with her clear head and conscience, commands an unassailable moral authority among the villagers. ``She would always protect a poor and humiliated man,'' says the hunter Lukianov, and that is why she is disliked and feared by the wealthy people of Lukianovka. At the centre of the novel are such morally pure and strong characters of the people as the hunter Stepan Lukianov, a spiritually generous, socially active individual with an innate thirst for culture and knowledge, all of which earns him high regard among his fellow-villagers.
Georgi Markov thinks of such characters as Stepan Lukianov and old Mamika as embodying the soul of the 53 working people, their reason and not prejudices. They are exponents ofgenuine human values and the future therefore belongs to them.
The spirit of Siberia challenges the sentimental-romantic view of an old Siberian village and starkly reveals the class conflicts of the time. Such characters as Epifan Krivorukov or the village elder Filimon Seleznev who fawns on the Lukianovka wealthies are also indigeneously Siberian, although the future does not belong to them. The first part of the novel's Book Two entitled ``Polya'' tells a passionate haunting story of the daughter of a doctor's assistant Gorbiakov who married a son of Epifan Krivorukov, and of her trip to the hill country called Vasyugan Taiga in the company of her father-in-law who goes there ``to rake in money''. That trip, and the characters of the vampire-monks who mercilessly cheat the local people, and the soul of Epifan corrupted by lust for gain are masterfully drawn in the novel. The picture of human depravity and callousness that unfolds itself to Polya leads her to an irrevocable decision to break with the ``world of the Krivorukovs'', the ``world of injustice and fraudulence".
Polya's decision elicits this reaction from her father, who has devoted his whole life to trying to bring down ``the world of property, cruelty and injustice": ``I have always felt that property with all the consequences its nature entails cannot interest you and cannot become the main concern of your life.''
Thus a watershed can be discerned among the protagonists in the novel, a watershed that has to do not only with class identity but also with spiritual and moral values. On one side is the ``Krivorukov'' world of money-grubbing, cruelty, injustice and lack of moral scruple, and on the other the world of truth and goodness, honest work and struggle for justice.
The doctor's assistant Gorbiakov, who arranges the escape of Ivan Akimov, is by no means an alien to Siberia and its people. After serving his three years of exile, he remained in Siberia in order to treat exiles, hunters, fishermen and peasants, and, most important, to carry out most responsible Party assignments under the strictest secrecy. Like Mamika and Stepan Lukianov, he commands unchallengeable moral authority in the local community. While nobody knew about his secret life and his links with the revolutionaries and 54 ``state criminals'', everyone was aware of Gorbiakov's extraordinary personality, his purity of soul, powerful intelligence and character, and his basic goodness with regard to the people. A true democratic intellectual, the Bolshevik Gorbiakov is inseparable from the working people, their aspirations and the best of their traditions.
The writer is very truthful when he shows that the most generous, intelligent, morally scrupulous souls among the people feel drawn to the Bolsheviks and are in their ranks. For the Leninist party's world view expresses the most cherished aspirations of the working people and their best features, accumulating the social and moral experience of the popular masses, all of which makes it near and dear to the masses.
These humanistic ideals, Geprgi Markov's novel argues, attracted such honest Russian intellectuals as Professor Likhachev.
A true member of the Russian intelligentsia, Professor Likhachev comes to understand that ``the native land would not be cleansed of scum" without a revolution and that ``otherwise mediocrities-all kinds of curmudgeons and impostors-would continue to trample upon my nation, desecrate its great and beautiful soul, thwarting its noble impulses and lofty aspirations.''
Georgi Markov's novel Siberia is a profoundly patriotic book. Its patriotism lies in the assertion that social and moral revolution in the vast Russian expanse is inevitable and that socialism is the main force for carrying out Mikhailp Lomonpsov's great behest: ``Russian might will be multiplied by Siberia".
There is deep meaning in the fact that decades later Soviet literature keeps turning back to the romantic stormy early years of the Revolution. It shows the moral heights to which the Revolution had swept such inconspicuous and unexceptionable people as Pravdokha, a semi-literate village lad, one of the many who worked as rural correspondents for the Peasant Newspaper (Glebov's story ``Pravdokha''), the YCL'er Venka Malyshev, a criminal investigator (Pavel Nilin's story ``Cruelty''\, and Duishen, a former Red Army man who becomes a school teacher (Chinehiz Aitmatov's story ``Duishen'').
There has recently been a crop of books about the socialist transformation of this country, giving us a feel of 55 the pristine moral beauty of the revolutionary ideas, their humanism and genuine nationwide appeal. These include Salt Valley and Commission by Sergei Zdygin, The Discovery of the World by Vassili Smirnov, The Sources by Georgi Konovalov and Destiny by Pyotr Proskurin.
The characters portrayed in these books, just as those of the widely known Chapayev by Dmitry Furmanov, The Iron Flood by Alexander Serafimovich, How the Steel Was Tempered by Nikolai Ostrovsky and Virgin Soil Upturned by Mikhail Sholoknov, testify convincingly that the people who carried out the Great October Socialist Revolution were morally pure as well as ideologically committed.
The heroes of these books have been copied from life and have returned to life as models of spirituality. The lofty spirit of these heroes stemmed from their ideological and civic commitment. To them the meaning of life was selfless struggle for the happiness of the common man on earth.
The characters of these new men, revolutionaries and enthusiasts, were moulded in the flames of the Revolution, in the Civil War, in the creative endeavour of the early Five-Year Plans and in the battle against fascism. The open class conflict with the world of exploitation and fascist barbarism revealed the true mettle of this new character which accumulates the moral and ideological values of socialism. That was a heroic character reflecting the most progressive trends of the time, which is why it has become trie leading type of character in our literature.
Modern Soviet prose is still very much concerned with the study of the heroic characters born in the flames of the Revolution and in the battles of the Great Rtriotic War.
An important recent work about the history of the Revolution is Sergei Zalygin's novel Salt Valley. That novel, showing the Civil War in Siberia, is not just a return to an old theme. Sergei Zalygin studies and interprets the revolutionary events from the vantage point of the present time and is able to discover new aspects to those events looking at them from a modern angle.
The writer is concerned with the way the peasantry reacted to the Revolution. The plot centres on the peasant war against Kolchak in Siberia, the life of the peasant partisan republic in the village of Salt Valley and the surrounding villages.
56Before writing the novel, Zalygin spent a long time in painstaking historical studies. Sergei Zalygin copiously quotes authentic documents of the Civil War against Kolchak that was waged in the vast expanse of Siberia. He knew that he was incurring no small risk when he quoted page after page from various appeals, reports, manifestos and leaflets of the time, and when he cited articles and other items from newspapers (as it turns out, the ``peasant republics" that sprang up in the hinterlands of Siberia under Kolchak, had not only their administrative bodies and partisan armies but also their- own newspapers). The abundance of documentary material seems more suited to scholarly studies, and not to fiction prose. And yet the writer did that deliberately in order to re-create the authentic picture of the time.
The main aim of the book is to bring home the idea, not preconceived but teased out of life and growing out naturally from the material, characters and narrative, that the October Revolution and Soviet government were the solely possible historical road for the people of Siberia. The book argues that the Revolution and Lenin's ideas were not imposed on the people from without but, on the contrary, these ideas were germinated in the midst of the people and the Revolution provided an outlet for the nation's quest of a better future.
The main artistic aim of the novel is to convey the popular character of the October Socialist Revolution and the social implications of the Civil War.
That is why Zalygin attaches so much importance to facts and various documents which, even when read today, convey the elemental force of the Revolution, the \'elan and energy of the risen people.
The purport or the novel, and indeed, the essence of the time described in it, is that all these appeals and proclamations, reports and orders of the United Peasant Red Army, set in the context of the narrative, acquire an artistic quality as poignant documents of the epoch. So great was the revolutionary \'elan of the masses, their jubilant commitment to the Revolution that one can still hear behind the clumsily written appeals, orders and manifestos drawn up by half-literate peasants, scribes, teachers and other peasant intelligentsia the powerful music of the Revolution, the romantic mood of the cathartic revolutionary epoch. This is the tuning fork to which the talented author has set 57 his whole novel. As a result, he is able to convey the spirit, music and poetry of the time -not only through the flesh-and-blood characters and epic scenes and pictures of popular life, but also through the language of the narrative, the speech of the peasants and the general emotional atmosphere which pervades the book and lends it originality.
The book draws the portrait of the revolutionary people and holds up a mirror to the time which Zalygin perceives keenly and fully. Building on documents and authentic facts, and modeling his characters on real people, Zalygin drew vivid symbolic portraits of the peasants who formed the partizan republic of Salt Valley which he invented. A true artist, he sought to give verbal expression to the historical truth of the time, to recapture the flavour and riotous colours of the time, and to tell of the dramatic and at times tragic contradictions.
No matter that there is no village in Siberia called Salt Valley, no matter that the roster of the heroes of the Civil War does not include the names of Meshcheriakov, Commander-in-Chief of the United Peasant Red Army, the rural intellectual Petrovich, a Bolshevik commissar of that army, and other popular leaders, such as Kondratiev and Dovgal. Their names, like the story of their peasant republic, will from now on be part of the historical heritage and the people's memory. Such is the power of verbal expression. These typical characters found in typical circumstances recreate trie time of the painful historical choice which the Russian peasants of Siberia made during the Civil War. The author has not just chronicled the turn of the peasant masses towards the Revolution and the Bolsheviks, a turn which, in Lenin's words, decided the destinies of the Soviet power in Russia. He has tried to show why this turn was inevitable.
The answer is shown through the conflict between Commander-in-Chief Meshcheriakov and the Chief of General Staff of the Salt Valley Republic, Brusenkov. The conflict which propels the narrative lies in the limited, petty-- bourgeois, truncated view of the Revolution taken by Brusenkov. Many writers of recent years, including Pavel Nilin in ``Cruelty'', have dwelt on trie crippling limitations of pettybourgeois revolutionary consciousness, which is very important for grasping the contradictions of that time. Zalygin's novel adds to the understanding of the inhuman nature of the 58 narrow-minded petty-bourgeois revolutionarism that brought so many misfortunes to Venka Malyshev and threatens mistrust and arrest to Efim Meshcheriakov.
Ivan Brusenkov, Chief of Staff of the Red partizan republic of Salt Valley, is sincerely committed to the Revolution. But his notion of revolutionary duty is marked by sectarian limitations and crudeness (and this shows the narrowness of petty-bourgeois consciousness). ``Why is it that you cannot live without enemies, why do you need them like air?" asks Meshcheriakov. ``What would you be doing if there were only friends around you?" Brusenkov is cruel and suspicious, power-hungry and intolerant of people who think differently from him. He ``looks with bloodshot eyes even on his own men''. He is a negation of the Leninist humanistic ideal of the Revolution which he compromises in the eyes of the people.
For ``the people have longed for humanity over centuries'', reflects Mesncheriakov. ``Today we have smelled humanity and we want it more and more!" For ``the people have risen up. They have risen up for justice!" says the peasant Vlasikhin to Brusenkov. Condemned to death by Brusenkov, he has been freed by Meshcheriakov.
The Soviet government was defended by peasants, and even by old folks and children, precisely because, in the words of Vlasikhin, ``it came from justice" and brought humanity to the world. One of the characters in the novel says, ``Even if Soviet government fell to some dark force in Siberia and in the whole of Russia, it would be restored everywhere because people have seen it once and have understood what it means!''
What gives Zalygin's novel relevance is that it reveals the inherent humanism of the Revolution and of the Civil War waged by the people. ``It is pure and noble of itself, nothing like it has happened before. It is a war for ultimate justice, and not for somebody but for the people,'' argues Meshcheriakov upholding his idea of the Revolution against Brusenkov and his ilk.
The humanism, nobleness and justice of the revolutionary idea are embodied in the character of Efim Meshcheriakov and the stand taken by the Bolsheviks Petrovich, Kondratiev and Dovgal in the conflict between Meshcheriakov and Brusenkov. The figure of Efim Meshcheriakov is a major asset of the novel He is a man all of a piece, genuine 59 in all his feelings, winning our hearts with his native talent, a sharp and powerful intelligence, albeit not refined by education. His mind is engaged in constant and intensive search for military tactical solutions and, far more important, for moral truth and justice. He trusts people and loves them in a kindly though anything but weepy way.
What the peasant leader Efim Meshcheriakov feels with his guts and gives vent to in his spontaneous moral quests, expressing the soul of the people, the Bolshevik Party members Petrovich and Kondratiev have crystallised into a coherent and consistent world view. That is why Petrovich and Kondratiev, who share Meshcheriakov's revulsion for Brusenkov's attitudes, are able to combat them in a far more consistent way than Meshcheriakov himself. ``You want nothing but power,'' Kondratiev tells Brusenkov. ``I am not going to see Revolution as naked power, like you do. That's not what it is all about.''
The Revolution has taken place in the name of truth and justice. This is the message of Zalygin's, and it is shared by the many-volume epic The Windward Shore of the Estonian writer Aadu Hint, who draws on different material.
The four-volume novel of Aadu Hint is a sweeping epic of the hard life of the Estonian people under the rule of the barons, the village wealthies, the Lutheran priests and the autocracy of the Russian Tsar. The main concern of the novel is to show the awakening of class consciousness and the sharpening of class antagonisms in the Estonian village during the Revolution of 1905 and in particular during the First World War. The novel challenges the nationalistic myth that there was a kind of class peace in Estonia in the past:
A central episode in the novel is the clash between Captain Tonis Tihu, who used to think of himself as the father and benefactor of his community, and the members of the community. Tonis, born a peasant, is a ``self-made man''. He directs all his energy and intelligence to getting rich, and in the process gradually kills all the genuine human qualities in himself. ``Tonis Tinu walked slowly and with an air of importance, but presently he became aware that he was quivering inside him. Possessing a sharp and clear intelligence, he had to admit to himself that he was indeed scared of something, very greatly scared.'' The fear he was 60 experiencing had nothing to do with his wealth. What, then, did he fear?
Tonis Tihu feared the awesome power of the people which he saw as his personal enemy. This was the dividing line which forever separated Tonis from his brother, Matis Tihu, and ran througn the heart of another character of the novel, Jonas Tihu. The latter character is an undoubted success of the author. The son of a ``Red'' who was shot in 1905, he was brought up by the kulak Jaacob Taalder for whom he worked, and he also considers himself, to be a ``self-made man".
The soul of Jonas reveals all the contradictions typical of a small owner. He is the luckiest fisherman in the community, but his luck is the result of hard work and fishing skill. The muscles of his arms and legs, and especially of his back and shoulders, are as hard as iron from constant rowing.
Toonas Tihu is obsessed with a desire to get rich. Initially all his aspirations and ideals are focussed on a single ambition, and that is to become ``respectable'' like his master Jaacob Taalder or his distinguished relative Captain Tonis Tihu. To get rich, he marries the beautiful Anni, Jaacob Taalder's daughter, although he loved a poor woman labourer Liinu and knew that Anni had never loved him.
His master, Jaacob Taalder, instilled in him a lust for gain, and fanned it into a flame that at first gutted all his noble impulses, even love. Who knows, perhaps he would have become another Jaacob Taalder or, with luck, ``king'' Tonis if the hideous world of greed and gain did not reveal its worst side to him. While Joonas was at the front, Anni and her lover Gvido-the so-called ``respectable'', i. e., wealthy peasants, libelled him and had him sent to a labour camp. There he met revolutionaries.
A new great world of struggle for a better future for the people was opened up to Joonas and introduced him to genuine human values that are inseparable from Revolution. He dies in action as a Red Guard soldier during the insurrection in Tallinn feeling that ``although he was dying, he had achieved his happiness".
The character of Joonas Tihu rings true to life and has a polemical edge to it. The author challenges the trend of idealising the old peasantry, its morality and values, and opposes the unhistorical and asocial view of the old village 61 to be found in some publicistic and literary critical writings. Aadu Hint, of course, is not alone in this argument. Like a number of other writers in this country, he shows the class differentiation among the peasants, lack of social homogeneity among them and the contradictory nature of the peasant who is, on the one hand, a working man, and on the other, a proprietor, a duality repeatedly noted by Lenin. The ethos of the Revolution, the new ethos of our time, inherits only the genuine morality of the people which has no use for inhuman mores generated by any private property, including that of the small-holding peasant.
The hero of one of Chinghiz Aitmatov's stories, `` Duishen'', is a former Red Army man, who learnt to read and write in the army and became a village teacher in the remote 1920s. He comes to a god-forsaken Kirghiz village wearing his soldier's coat. He begins his first lesson by showing his pupils the picture of a man. ``This is Lenin''.
Being a teacher in the 1920s meant more than just spreading education. Teaching children the three R's in the hinterlands of Kirghizia at the time inevitably involved fighting for the Soviets, for Lenin's ideas, for a new life.
``He accomplished more than he realised. Yes, he did, because in that school of his, in that old mud stable with gaping holes in the walls through which we could see the snow-clad mountain tops, we Kirghiz children, who had never left the confines of our village, suddenly glimpsed a new and wonderful world.'' This is a famous woman of Kirghizia, Academician Altynai Sulaimanova, who is the narrator in the story, speaking about her first teacher.
It was an uphill struggle involving risk of life. The book tells about it with such passion and artistic truth that, as always happens with a work of genuine art, one comes to think of the semi-literate teacher Duishen not as a ``fictitious'' literary character but as a real person. We follow the story of his life and experience pain and joy, and his acts stir our emotions and provoke reflection, we think about the revolution and the people it produced.
Every act and word of Duishen reveal the character of a Leninist Communist of the 1920s. It is a character whose main features are firm commitment to the ideal and selfless dedication to the revolutionary cause. ``Be that as it may, we shall change the village in the Lenin way,'' says a young village teacher in Glebov's short story ``Pravdokha'', and these 62 words sum up the lives of the teacher Duishen and other heroes of the 1920s.
The Revolution brought forth a new mould of man, a Communist and a Leninist. It awakened in the souls of our fathers revolutionary enthusiasm and a romantic desire to perform feats of valour.
The romantic appeal of the revolutionary character was the compelling force that made Pavel Kprchagin in Ostrovsky's How the Steel Was Tempered, Davidov and Nagulnov in Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned popular heroes in contemporary world literature.
Millions of people have come to identify the character of a Communist revolutionary with Sholokhov's Davidov and his associates, Razmetnov and Nagulnov. The worldwide popularity of Virgin Soil Upturned is comparable to the fame enjoyed by the films Battleship Potemkin and Chapayev. They bring artistic skill to revealing the dominant feature of the Lenin-style Communist: the moral beauty and appeal of revolutionary conviction and ideological commitment of our fathers.
The character of Davidov meets the description of a typical character that fully reflects its epoch, the great turning point in the nation's life in the 20s and 30s.
``Comrades, I am a worker from the Red Putilov Works in Leningrad. I have been sent to you, here, by our Communist Party and the working class to help you organize a collective farm and destroy the kulaks as our common bloodsucker."^^1^^ This is how Davidov introduces himself to the Cossacks. The character of Davidov, an envoy of the Party and a convinced Lenin-style Communist, is revealed in the drama-laden struggle for starting a collective farm in the hamlet of Gremyachy Log.
It comes out in Davidov's uncompromising stand against enemies, his boundless love for his fellow numan beings and to the working people who are ignorant and downtrodden and at times do not understand him. In a vivid scene, women mercilessly beat Davidov demanding the keys from the storehouses with grain seed while he, almost unconscious from pain and humiliation, refuses to give them the keys.
``~'Get on, you son-of-a-bitch!' Ignatyonok's old woman cried, stamping her foot.
_-_-_~^^1^^ M. Sholokhov, Virgin Soil Upturned, Book One, Moscow, 1979, p. 43.
63``'But it's for you, curse you...' Davidov said suddenly in an unusually resonant voice and looked round with a strange new light in his eyes, 'it's for you we're doing all this. And you're killing me. Blast you! I won't give you the keys, understand? Fact I won't! Well!'"^^1^^
This scene tells volumes about Davidov, a man of courage who loves people and is prepared to face anything for their sake. Davidov displayed true nobleness, humour, and understanding of human nature and life when several days later, in the presence of women blushing to tears, he told how the women were beating him up for trying to preserve seed grain for their own good, and how the angry Nastenka battered him on the luck with her fists and cried in despair, ``You unfeeling dummy, you! You block of stone! I've bruised my hands all over and it hasn't done a thing to him!"^^2^^
``She wanted me to go down on my knees and beg for mercy and give her the keys to the barns! But that's not the stuff we Bolsheviks are made of, citizens, and nobody's going to squeeze us into the shape they want! I was beaten up by officer cadets in the Civil War and even they couldn't knock the stuffing out of me! The Bolsheviks have never gone on their knees to anyone, and they never will, fact!"^^3^^
The unyielding revolutionary firmness combined with gentleness and noble attitude to people makes Davidov a true champion of the Revolution who wins people's hearts.
Davidov is totally dedicated to his cause. His cause is his life. His ideals and communist convictions cannot be separated from his work and life. For all that, he is a flesh-and-blood character drawn in lusty colours.
Davidov's unbending commitment to his ideas, the romantic beauty of revolutionary convictions make him a man out of the ordinary, a man who, as the old man Arzhanov aptly says in the novel, ``lives his life at a gallop''. His acts are informed with a clearly understood aim, with deep revolutionary meaning.
There is, it seems to me, something in the material and message of the Polesye Diary by the Byelorussian writer _-_-_
~^^1^^ M. Sholokhov, Virgin Soil Upturned, Book One, p. 321,
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 319.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 340.
64 Ivan Melezh that makes it akin to Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned. It consists of two books, People of the Marsh and The Breath of Thunderstorm.Ivan Melezh turns to the period of collectivisation, and he looks at the country's relatively recent past bearing in mind the historical experience of subsequent decades. Although most of the action in the novel takes place in a small village of Kureni tucked away in the Polesye woodlands, the destinies of the Byelorussian peasants shown in it reflect the social destinies of our country, specifically of the village that was fighting its way through contradictions to a new collective life along socialist lines.
The novel argues that collectivisation, i. e., the setting up of peasant artels and cooperatives, is a logical and inevi* table stage of the socialist revolution, a stage that marks its deepening and development. The writer draws typical characters of the people who carried out that rural revolution, the Communist peasants Apeika, Mikanor and others who initiated the collectivisation. They are engaged in a veritable class battle although it takes pkce not in the battlefield but in daily life and work and in the people's souls. They are up against a vicious, experienced and intelligent enemy, and that is the centuries-old instinct for gain and private property personified in such vivid characters as Zubrich, the kulak Glushak and his son Evkhim.
Apeika is one of the most impressive portraits of a Communist in Soviet literature. He draws strength from his deep links with the people. He belongs to this place because he has been born here and his whole life is associated with it. At the same time he gradually comes to acquire a sense of civic, Communist responsibility for the destinies, not only of his native village and the woodlands, but for the destinies of all people. The Communist convictions, to which Apeika had been led by his working life, dramatically expanded his horizons, made him a bigger individual and a genuine leader of the masses.
Such people as Apeika were the central figures in the struggle for a new life. The writer shows the inner torment of Apeika at the unusual juncture in history when the ways of the people that had taken shape over millennia were crumbling, when all the habitual, if outdated, folkways, to which peasants had grown so attached, were vanishing. And yet, however difficult things were for Apeika, ``for all the __PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 3---835 65 anxieties and the questions that confronted him,'' writes Melezh, ``a feeling never left him of great space which revealed ever greater depth and width to him and held out a heady promise of exciting and extraordinary events... While he realised that the road was hard and that it would not be easy for him and all the others who had embarked on it, Apeika knew that it was the only right road, that there was no other road and never would be, that out of all the pains and worries would be born something beautiful, the new village of the future.''
Faith in the future and a sense of mission are the qualities shared by characters as diverse as the Polesye peasant Apeika and the Bolshevik worker Davidov, the half-literate teacher of the 1920s Duishen, and youthful Pravdokha from Glebov's story of that title.
Pravdokha is as yet alone in his remote village inhabited by ignorant hidebound people who are suspicious of the changes that the 1920s brought. He lives in a cold shabby hut with his hungry fretful grandmother, but his life has a purpose: he lives in the name of truth. He got his nickname, Pravdokha (which translates roughly as ``truth man'') because he is ever ready to stick up for truth.
He fights for truth in the most effective way turning for help to the Soviets for which his father fought and died. Using pages from smudged school copy-books lined for writing and 'rithmetic he writes articles to the local paper about anything that he thinks is incompatible with the Soviet way of hfe. He writes about the local doctor who extorts fees from the poor, the head of the provincial law-keeping force who is a drunkard, about thieves and the raping of a school teacher. The boy's last letter to the editors was a desperate cry for help. He wrote that three attempts had been made on his life. The bootlegger forester, riding on horseback, pushed him off a bridge into the river. The incident was dismissed as a drunken prank. A month later Pravdokha's house was set on fire. They managed to put it out. A month later someone threw a stone into his room, smashing a window and a lamp. Then he found a note containing a threat: ``Stop writing, you scamp. Or else we'll twist your heels forward and we'll cut off your head and throw it into the well.''
``I am not afraid of death,'' Pravdokha wrote at the end of his letter. ``But I do want to live longer in order to 66 help the Leninist Soviet government to bring the truth to the working people, which is why I am asking you to take measures, otherwise I go to bed and never know whether I would wake up or not, and that makes me unhappy because in my mind I recognise and respect only the truth, and my abhorrence of wickedness is the source of all my suffering.''
The writer creates a moving image of a youthful truthseeker, a veritable Cavalier of Truth, as he was called by his teacher who had met with a tragic end. The teacher, who has made Pravdokha what he is, is an unseen presence in the story. Pure as water from a spring, the youthful crusader came to the god-foresaken place with a clear aim, ``to remake the village along Leninist lines''. She epitomises all the best moral features that the October Revolution had brought out in people. The best things in the world are truth, a clear morning and pure water, she used to say to Pravdokha.
``To live means to rejoice in something. Life without joy is like death. To rejoice means to love. If so, then I am living. I love my job awfully, and I love children.? This is the last entry in her diary which she gave to Pravdokha shortly before her death.
``Father comes first, she comes second and I come third." This is how Pravdokha rated the importance of the 22-- yearold teacher in his own life, With ner name he swore a lifelong allegiance to the truth. Not only had. she taught him to read and write, and fostered his love for literature and .introduced him to the fascination of the poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov; she also made him think seriously about the meaning and purpose of life.
``~`You know which lines of Pushkin I like most? = __NOTE__ Complex quoting (tri-level). ``So the heavy hammer, crushing glass, forges iron.'' Well put, isn't it? These words sum up all my... how do you put it...' He was groping for a word. 'Credo?' But Pravdokha did not know that word, as he probably did not know the words 'motto' and 'slogan'.
``'In short, how I look upon life and what I want to be like.'"
His whole life is a clear answer to this question.
1 only have peace of soul if I live right,'' said Pravdokha. He did not only say it, he practised it. The sixteen-year-old boy is waging war on people whose hatred 67 and malice surround him. He is fighting against heavy odds. The local kulaks, the corrupt leaders of the provincial executive committee and the village Soviet. As a result of Pravdokha's letter, two of the local bigwigs who had driven the teacher to death have been put on trial, but the third, the local chief by the name of Borzunov, has been exonerated by the investigator who happened to be his crony, and is not only enjoying freedom Ibut is the unchallenged boss in the area. Pravdokha is doing everything to have that high-placed criminal brought to justice.
Pravdokha is killed with a stone that hits him in the temple, but he carries the day all the same: Borzunov and the forester Mavgura are punished.
``The nation and the Party are grateful to him for fearlessly opposing evil and for strengthening the flagging faith in the Soviets in his remote corner of the world,'' writes the author.
What is it that attracts us in Pravdokha and makes him a hero?
His purity, firmness of convictions and unshakeable faith in Lenin's truth. He embodies the essential features of the new man moulded by the atmosphere of the October Revolution. For all his moving simple-heartedness, that sixteenyear-old peasant boy has true revolutionary mettle. The poet Tikhonov once thus described such people,
``If nails could be made of people like this,
There would hot be stronger nails.
People like Pravdokha were children of their age and they were brought up by the heroes who advanced that age, such as his teacher Elizaveta Lebedeva and the former Red Army man Duishen.
It is not for nothing that Pravdokha cherishes the memory of his teacher: like the half-literate teacher Duishen, she brought to people the light of the Revolution.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2The Revolution started with the expropriation of the expropriators. But it was also from the outset a battle for .people's souls, ans that battle was often tragic.
Pavel Nilin in his ``Cruelty'' tells the reader in a chillingly matt€t-of-fact way as if it were a casual affair; ``In the 68 village of Skazyvaemaya which you can barely see from here on the edge of the forest, a newly arrived young teacher was crucified. They say she wanted to organise a Young Communist League cell.
Criminal investigator Venka Malyshev learns about this atrocity during his tour of the province. He is unaware that the cruelty of the tenacious old world would before long make him its victim.
Malyshev had many close shaves in battles with the enemy. But he did not die in battle. He was driven to suicide by wickedness and treachery.
The author writes feelingly and disturbingly about Venka Malyshev's suicide and funeral when all the townsfolk turned out to gape at a YCL'er who had shot himself for love.
But it was not for love that Venka Malyshev had killed himself.
Pavel Nilin reveals with great psychological acuity the overriding conflict of the time, the oattle between the cruel old world and the Leninist revolutionary humanity.
The hero of Pavel Nilin's story ``Cruelty'' upholds kindness, truth and conscience.
``Conscience? Conscience as understood by you and all sorts of truth-seekers? I leave it to vulgarisers like yourself, Comrade Malyshev. I am not interested in Christian ethics,'' says the journalist Yakov Uzelkov. He believes that love of fellow humans, kindness, honesty and conscience are attributes of Christian, not revolutionary ethics. He thinks that the YCL member Malyshev, who cannot live dishonestly and act contrary to his conscience, is ``contaminated'' with ``so-called Christian morality".
So Uzelkov sweeps under the rug conscience, honesty, truth and goodness as Christian morality. Without thinking twice, he concedes all these universal human values to the holy fathers...
And because, as the author tells us, Uzelkov always said ``the right things" and spoke ``on behalf of some supreme force" using the sonorous word ``we'', many believed him. ``They believed that conscience, honour and goodness are indeed 'Christian morality'. And instead of reinterpreting these values in revolutionary terms to return them to the working people, to whom they properly belong, they allowed the ideological enemy to use them as his weapons.''
69The significance of Pavel Nilin's story ``Cruelty'' consists in its reassertion of the Moral and spiritual gains of the Revolution, its conscience^ humanity and kindness.
The Revolution did not abolish the universal moral norms developed by the working people over the centuries. On the contrary, it made these lofty norms of morality, which are flouted in exploitative society, part of its armoury in order to enrich them with new communist content and make them a norm of relations among all people and nations.
Lenin was a man of great kindness and active love for his fellow men, of impeccable personal and social morality. It was his active love for the working people that made him so unyielding and firm towards the enemies.
The humanism and morality of the Revolution found expression in such Lenin-type characters of the 1920s as the teacher Duishen, the truth-loving rural newspaper correspondent Pravdokha and the YCL member Venka Malyshev.
Venka Malyshev embraces the Revolution, Lenin and the Soviet government in which he believes utterly. He ``is sincerely convinced that all the intelligent working men, wherever they are, should take the side of the Soviets. And if for some reason they are against the Soviets, there must be some mistake in their thinking".
This belief sustained Venka in his prolonged and courageous battle for the soul of Lazar Baukin, a poor peasant who had fallen in with bandits. Exposing himself to mortal danger, he followed Baukin and other peasants like him to the wild taiga forests, arguing with them and eventually convincing them.
``He won the hearts of these brash peasants not only by the strength of his convictions expressed in precise and heartfelt words, but mostly by the courage with which .he was ever ready to uphold his convictions in the face of those who proudly displayed tattooed inscriptions on their chests which read, 'Death to Communists'.
``And Venka was a spokesman for the Communists.''
What made Venka Malyshev run such risks and spend weeks on end in the taiga forests in the midst of the bandits? His chiefs would hardly have approved of his actions. What made him probe into the depths of Lazar Baukin's callous soul and try to foster the .seeds of kindness that survived in it? Lazar Baukin had nearly killed Venka. Malyshev and later escaped from the criminal investigators.
70What drove that wonderfully pure and just person in his selfless life dedicated to doing good for his fellow men? The answer is, conviction. The true communist conviction which was his second nature. ``We are responsible for everything that is and will be while we are around.'' Also: ``Everything is our business. And we are responsible for everything that anyone does.'' This idea, which Venka Malyshev repeats on various occasions, is the core of his. character. His idea of conscience was love of people, not the Gospel charity that calls for humility and resignation, but the Leninist communist love that awakens human dignity and readiness to struggle in the name of justice.
Ideological commitment and morality are inseparable. Human conscience has a social nature. The more noble and definite man's social ideal, and the stronger his public spirit and desire to serve the people, the sterner and more incorruptible his conscience.
A man of his time, Venka Malyshev is strict and exacting with regard to himself, for a champion of happiness for the human race should above all be human himself. That is why he sets such store by what Yakov Uzelkov considers to be ``abstract'', ``Christian'' notions of Truth, Honesty, and Conscience; He associates them with communism. ``Should one have communist conscience or not?" Venka presses his. argument with Uzelkov.
As he sees it, communism is justice and truth. Justice and truth for all. People have dreamt for ages about communism as a society of justice. How is it possible, then, that the builders of communism, who are responsible for the life of all the people, should be cheating and crafty? In any business one could outsmart others, out ``a Communist should not cheat. He has no right to cheat.''
Venka Malyshev is a fierce champion of humanity and truth, no less than is Pravdokha (``the truth man''). Like all champions of truth, he believes people: ``I think it is impossible not to believe.''
Malyshev took his life because it seemed to him that the Leninist revolutionary truth for which he had fought all his life had given in to the onslaught of ``Uzelkov'' philistine lies. Venka Malyshev had explained the conscience and truth of the revolution so convincingly to Lazar Baukin that the latter came to believe Soviet government. A daredevil of a man, Lazar Baukin tied up and handed over to 71 the militia ``the king of the taiga" Kostya Vorontsov who inspired fear in all the community. But the chief ordered to arrest Lazar Baukin, ostensibly ``for political reasons" but actually in order to claim the credit for the seizure. That finished Venka Malyshev,
``'I feel so ashamed before Lazar that my ears burn and everything inside me turns!... Now it turns out that I have deceived them, deceived in the name of Soviet government! I can't bring myself to face those people. And the chief says higher politics demands that it should DC so.'
``'What politics?'
``'I also put that question to him. I asked him what politics and who needs it if we are fighting for truth without sparing our efforts and lives. We are fighting for truth only! And then we allow ourselves to lie and cheat...'"
The shot at Venka's head is aimed at all the people who, by their bureaucratic indifference and selfish behaviour, tarnish the image of the Revolution and of Soviet government. But that of course, is no way to combat injustice. Rather, it is an act of despair, a momentary weakness in the face of an unknown enemy whose nature Malyshev does not understand. He is aware of falsehood in Uzelkov's views but he cannot trace it to its sources. An injustice perpetrated by his chief avowedly in the name of the Soviets confounds Venka and plunges him in despair. His chief, a former circus actor, fought on the revolutionary side during the Civil War and was even wounded. Why has this man, who defended the Revolution in battle, betrayed its great behests in everyday dealings with people? What germ is corrupting his soul?
The intrepid fighter against bandits and seeker of truth, Venka Malyshev was defeated when confronted with philistine psychology.
The characters of Venka and Pravdokha, Davidov and Duishen, are the harbingers of a new type of human relations on earth reflecting the moral purity of the revolutionary ideals and the people who carried it out.
Before long the authenticity of their principles and convictions would be put to the ultimate test of the war.
72 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Three __ALPHA_LVL1__ The Test of War __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1It is thirty-five years since the end of the Second World War. And the farther those days recede into the past, the more apparent the significance of the victory not only for the past but also for the present and the future.
For the Soviet people, the years of war were equal to a century, as the poet Nikolai Tikhonov said. And in terms of impact on the destinies of mankind the war, which the Soviet people waged as the Great Patriotic War, and the victory in that war, are comparable only to the Great October Socialist Revolution.
The war brought out the ideological and moral values of the Revolution that gave strength to individuals and the Soviet nation as a whole.
``My generation grew up on the romantic memory of the Revolution and the Civil war. Our favourite song was the Civil War song 'Kakhovka', our favourite film, Chapayev, and our favourite book How the Steel Was Tempered. Most likely we were inspired by the example of their heroes, a fair-haired girl in an army coat, Chapayev, the daring legendary commander of a Red division and the stern and furious Pavka Korchagin, when in 1941 we went to the front as volunteers.'' This is how the link between the past and present is seen by the poetess Julia Drunina whose whole life and poetic career are associated with the war. And in turn she addresses this question to the youth of today, ``Should you not admire the heroes of the Great Patriotic War in the same way as we, the boys and girls born in the '20s, admired the heroes of the Civil War? Shouldn't our youth understand the beauty of frontline friendship and pause to consider the nature of the moral strength that made people cover enemy gun-ports with their bodies? A war of liberation is not all about gore, death and suffering. 73 It is also about the soaring human spirit, about selflessness, self-sacrifice and heroism.''
It is extraordinary how, in the fourth post-war decade, Soviet writers and readers, the literary community and society turn again and again to that heroic and tragic saga... Without purporting to analyse the whole vast body of literature aoout the Great Patriotic War, let us try to understand the attraction this theme holds for writers and readers alike. The Soviet writers are interested, not so much in the military as in the human aspects of the Great Patriotic War.
The war marked a great watershed in the life of our people and of the world. ``There have been wars before, they ended and everything remained as before. This war is not between states. The war is being waged against fascism for life on Earth, to prevent a thousand years of slavery which has been named a Thousand-Year Reich,'' says the hero of Grigory Baklanov's short novel An Inch of Land, Lieutenant Motovilov.
The war was the ultimate test of the spiritual strength of every Soviet person and of the whole nation. ``It put man on the brink of the abyss as if to probe the limits of his endurance, to see what makes him tick and where he draws his strength from,'' wrote Nikolai Tikhonov, an eminent poet. It stretched to the limit the potential of the Soviet man and of socialist society.
A salient feature of the contemporary literary process is that writers are most of all concerned with the spiritual and moral sources of the Victory and show how the tragedy of war brought out the indisputable moral values ana the fortitude of the Soviet man. ``To save the world, the planet from plague---this is humanism. And we are humanists,'' wrote Vera Inber in her wartime poem ``The Pulkovo Meridian''. The world wants to know who we are. East and West are asking: what are you like, Soviet man?'', wrote Alexander Bek in Volokolamsk Highway.
Drawing on the traditions of the Revolution and the Civil War and of Leninist revolutionary commitment, the trying time of the war provided a new frame of reference for the behaviour of the future generations.
The liberation war was an inexhaustible source of the nation's moral experience, a testimony of its fortitude, unheard-of richness and beauty of soul. It is still a powerful factor in the country's, spiritual life. Asked why, after so 74 many years, he keeps harking back to the subject of the Great Patriotic War, the author Sergei Smirnov had this to say, ``I am convinced that the feat performed by the Soviet people in that war reveals the true soul of the nation better than anything else... The war offered thousands of instances of the loftiest and most beautiful human qualities. I think this material has great educational impact".
Smirnov's The Brest Fortress is a dramatic, tragic book about heroism. It is- an unusual book in substance and in the amount of effort that has gone into writing it. Smirnov performed a feat of sorts in writing this book that re-creates the heroic story of the defence of the Brest Fortress and resurrects its defenders from oblivion.
Sergei Smirnov worked on this book for ten years. It is unique in conception, genre and material.
The book grew out of a legend about the courageous defenders of the Brest Fortress which failed to get due mention in the press at the time and was passed by word of mouth. ``I must say that I was immediately carried away by the story of the Brest Fortress,'' wrote Sergei Smirnov. ``I felt a great undiscovered mystery and a vast field for research, Tor arduous but exciting investigation. One felt that the theme is permeated with heroism, that it highlights the heroic spirit of our people and our army. So I set about collecting material about the heroic defence of the Brest Fortress.''
The work was indeed the work of a researcher and historian, and a connoisseur of human souls. To restore the true epic picture of the defence of the Brest Fortress it was not enough to study the war archives and the brief and scattered reports that appeared in the press. One had to find the eyewitnesses of the legendary siege, the surviving defenders of the Brest Fortress. Smirnov's radio broadcasts and trips around the country which took him to more than twenty regions of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and Byelorussia where he had hundreds of meetings with the readers and heroes of his book evoked a great public response and made the act of writing the book a great public event. His work on the book had implications far beyond literature. The Brest Fortress was a civic act, a writer's feat.
The strictly documentary basis of The Brest Fortress lends it unassailable authenticity. The author's manner is spare and understated, but its moral and psychological impact is extraordinary.
75In the preface Sergei Smirnov speaks up in favour of the artist using documentary technique and relates a conversation he had with a fellow-writer when he was starting work on his book about the Brest Fortress.
``'Why do you want to take all this trouble?' he wondered. 'To seek out hundreds of people, compare their memories and sift through rafts of facts... You are a writer, not a historian. You've got the basic material, sit down and write a long short story or a novel, and not a documentary book.'
``I confess that the temptation to follow that advice was great. By that time the oasic facts of the siege of the Brest Fortress had come through and if I were to write a story or a novel with fictitious heroes, I would have had the writer's sacred right to invent on my side, which would have given me 'room for manoeuvre' and freed me of 'the shackles of documentarism'. The temptation was very great indeed.''
The heroes of the Brest Fortress have already inspired and will continue to inspire books of various genres. But Smirnov's book occupies a special place among them because it is a scrupulously documented chronicle of the heroic feat. And what happened at the Brest Fortress would make any fiction pale by comparison. It has to do with largerthan-life characters caught in such a dramatic situation mat bare facts replace fiction and have an overpowering and ennobling impact on the reader that no fiction could achieve.
We are glad that the author had resisted the temptation to write a novel or story with fictitious characters and chose to write a documentary book which received a wellearned Lenin Prize. Smirnov's book is a complete historical essay about the defence of the Brest Fortress, an account of the outstanding event of the early months of the Great Patriotic War. As the critics justly noted, the event ``is so significant in itself, throws such revealing light on the general character of the war, its hard beginning, the unheard-of fierceness, the opposite moral motives and goals of the parties to the conflict that the very fact that the strict documentary details 'of the event have been reproduced is a great achievement".
The author, however, did not confine himself to restoring the historical truth of the great combat feat in all the concrete details. He discovered the real participants of the 76 defence, salvaged them from oblivion, told their life stories and tried to penetrate into their characters in order to identify the moral motives of their behaviour. Thus he came up with a series of documentary novellas about the defenders, about the writer's search for thin and broken threads of which eventually the documentary warp and woof of the book were made.
The Brest Fortress shows a gallery of portraits, dozens of life histories of common Soviet people who became heroes, and of whom readers khew nothing before Smirnov's book.
The writer's most impressive discovery is Major Gavrilov, whose courage, grit and perseverance seemed to have no limits.
Gavrilov was an ignorant unlettered lad when he joined the Red Army. Like the teacher Duishen in Chinghiz Aitmatov's story he learned to read and write in the army, became a Red commander and at the start of the war was a major in command of the eastern fort of the fortress. That fort held out for seven days against the enemy who heavily outnumbered and outgunned the defenders, and had planes and tanks. The defenders were undaunted by lack of food and water, cruel air raids, tank attacks and tear bombs.
When the fort fell the German machine-gunners searched for the commander in one casemate after another. Meanwhile Gavrilov was digging in in a narrow tunnel made in a sand rampart. There ne spent several days without food and water, and no sooner did the Germans leave than the fort came to life again and bristled up with machine-gun fire. Gavrilov and twelve soldiers who had survived by a fluke emerged from the dungeons and put up a brave defense with three machine guns. Again the enemy shells, mines and tanks came down on the handful of valiant men.
Gavrilov broke through the enemy lines with the help of hand grenades and hid in the former garrison stables where he spent five days feeding on horse rodder. He was sick and his strength was waning, but when the Germans discovered him, he fought them to the last. They launched three attacks on his cover and each time were driven off by hand grenades. It was only when he was wounded, unconscious and emaciated that he was taken prisoner.
What gave such courage and strength of spirit to the defenders of the Brest Fortress?
77The answer is to be found in a chapter entitled ``The Commissar" and devoted to the political worker Fomin, one of the leaders of the Brest Fortress defenders. He was a YCL member in the late 1920s, writes Smirnov. He might have been one of the younger brothers of Pavel Korchagin, who were too young to take part in the Civil War, but who heard the whistle of the bullets fired from the rifles of the kulaks, worked in chilly wind on the scaffolding of the steel plant at Magnitogorsk in the Urals and built the city of youth, Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the wild taiga forests.
``The time was short on material benefits ana long on enthusiam, a time of cruel struggle and heady dreams, of merciless uprooting of the past and of fabulous innovation. That time produced a remarkable type of Communist and YCL'er, a heroic rank-and-file Party soldier who was prepared to go into action in any field on the first call.''
Fomin was just such a soldier of the Party, a son of his heroic time. Before the war, writes Smirnov, he was a political worker in the rank of commissar. At dawn on June 22, 1941 he was called upon to prove his worth as a political worker. He lived up to his rank of commissar. He appeared in the most dangerous places and often led people in counter-attack himself. He hardly slept at all and was suffering from hunger and thirst like the soldiers. But whenever they could come by some food and water, he was the last to receive his ration and made a point of seeing to it that no preference was given to him over others. Towards the end of the siege Fomin was wounded. But when the nurse who was attending to several wounded soldiers rushed to his aid, Fomin stopped him and said, ``Attend to them first.'' He sat on a wooden case in the corner and waited for his turn.
``What a generation of men it was! They were like bayonets,'' this eloquent assessment came from the poet and prose-writer Vassili Subbotin who authored another documentary book about the war. It is entitled How Wars End. While Smirnov's The Brest Fortress depicts the dramatic and heroic beginning of the war, Subbotin's book bears testimony toits impressive last days.
The book by Subbotin is another document of the time, written as it is by a man who took part in the storming of Berlin and who saw the soldiers of his regiment hoist the Victory Banner over the Reichstag.
78Vassili Subbotin writes of himself: ``I am one of the few survivors, one of those born in 1921.
``We were twenty when the war began. There are almost none of us left.''
Much of How Wars End is about the generation of men who were born in the 1920s and of whom ``almost none were left".
The genre of the book is original.
Throughout the war Vassili Subbotin was a correspondent of a division paper called The Country's Warrior. He brought home from the front a heavy tin box full of notebooks and make-shift scribbling blocks war correspondents used. These notebooks record memories of the years that cannot fade in time, and they formed the basis of the book which consists of short documentary novellas that quote generously from his wartime despatches. The book also draws on the war memories of his surviving frontline comrades. Vassili Subbotin is in touch with them to this day, and they helped him to remember what he had forgotten and told him many things he did not know. In this sense, How Wars End is a collective look-back on the past by people who share memories of the war's last days. At the same time it is firmly anchored in the present telling the life stories of the surviving heroes, of the children or those who died in the war and of the destinies of the native country.
One story, called ``There in the Village'', is an account of Subbotin's visit to a village in the Briansk area where live the wife and son of the machine-gunner Pyotr Pyatnitsky who was buried in a common grave in Berlin fifteen years before.
Pyotr Pyatnitsky was the first to carry the Victory Banner towards Reichstag. He managed to crawl over the square under a hail of bullets and ran to the entrance, only to be killed at the foot of a column.
The local school has a stand devoted to Pyatnitsky and a portrait of him. Children proudly show to visitors a file containing ``Materials on the Life and Heroic Death of P.N. Pyatnitsky'', a biographical sketch, documents and newspaper clippings. The children began collecting documents as soon as they learnt about their fellow-villager's, death.
``These children are like this,'' writes the author. ``They discovered a grass-grown mound at the outskirt of the 79 village and felt that it must be somebody's grave. After all, it was the Briansk Forest, the land of the partisans. Although there was no marker, it turned out to be a grave. The children found out whose grave it was. They think there should not be unidentified graves... Motherland never forgets anything. It remembers everything!''
The book was written to pay tribute to the dead.
``Without glorifying the dead, I would not have been able to speak about the living,'' writes Subbotin. That compelling idea runs through the book and lends it a special mood, making it a work of great lyricism despite its documentary nature.
``I have seen many instances of heroic behaviour in everyday life,'' writes Subbotin. ``I have seen examples of spiritual greatness and self-sacrifice, but most important of all, fortitude in the face of the hardship of war.''
The writer tells about all these things without a shade of rhetoric, in a spare manner and with careful consideration of fact. He is concerned to write a truthful story so that readers believe in the people who did the impossible. Hence the scrupulous attention to detail. The facts and little grains of evidence related in the book could only have been learnt from eyewitnesses of the historic storm of the Reichstag.
The writer himself was one of the first to visit Hitler's devastated office and the sinister Empire Chancellery, he was present when the charred body of Gpebbels was identified and without knowing it used Goering's walking cane after the fighting was over. Even so, the main merit of How Wars End is not so much in the impressive detail and rare and poignant eyewitness accounts, but the author's portrait of the Soviet people at war drawn with documentary and artistic accuracy.
The short novella titled ``The Spoils of War" gets nearest to explaining the secret of the victory. Reading it, one cannot help thinking of another novella in the same book. Called ``At the End of Summer'', it draws on the author's impressions of visiting the parts of Berlin liberated by the Soviet Army into which the Allies then moved in. The vast square in front of the Reichstag, still reeking blood and gunpowder, was a great anthill or activity. There were French and English soldiers, everyone selling something-canned pork, cigarettes, liquor or worn uniforms. Some had nothing 80 to sell but chewing gum. ``Everyone was doing his business... Who would have thought that this giant market in the centre of Europe would be at the walls where the war had ground to a halt and where its last dead were buried. A marketplace set up by people whom we had let into Berlin after we had won the battle,'' the author writes with some bitterness.
Now, ``The Spoils of War" tells the story of the tin box for mines in which the author kept his wartime notebooks, and also of a small fibre suitcase which initially served the same purpose. He got that suitcase in the cellar of the German Reichsbank where he spent a night with the soldiers. They slept on the sacks with German money and used the purses with small change as pillows. One soldier, writes Subbotin, had no small change left for him and he rested his head on a heavy tarpauline bag with smooth bars. As it turned out, those were bars of gold. The suitcase which came into the author's possession was also full of gold bars. The suitcase was so heavy that several men had to lift it to empty it of its contents. ``It is strange that having looked through my notebooks and my diary which I kept in that suitcase,'' writes Subbotin, ``I found no mention of trie suitcase or of the gold and the bank vault. But then, come to think of it, it was natural that I paid no attention to these things at the time... I did not think it was something worth writing about. And now that I have written about it, I am afraid that people won't believe me.''
But it is impossible to disbelieve what Subbotin has to tell us. Just as it is impossible to question the fact told in The Brest Fortress: Major Gavrilov, having gone through all the suffering and humiliation as a prisoner-of-war, was upon being released appointed chief of a Soviet camp for Japanese POWs and went about organising the life of the camp with great humanity and consideration. He prevented a typhus epidemic among the prisoners, stopped abuses by the Japanese officers through whom the Japanese soldiers were supplied--- in short, he remained a real Communist and true Soviet man when guarding the enemies.
We have won the war above all due to the lofty spirit of the Soviet soldiers who kept their humanity at all times and were able to hold out in the most trying circumstances because they were sustained by faith, by an idea.
81 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 2The recent past sends powerful currents into the present, the currents or ideological commitment and moral purity.
Tall, fair-haired, we weren't easy to forget.
You'll read our myth-like story with a thrill,
Of men who left not having loved their fill,
Not finishing their final cigarette.^^1^^
This from the young poet Nikolai Mayorov who died at the front. Along with Pavel Kogan, Mikhail Kulchitsky, Nikolai Otrada and Vsevolod Bagritsky, who shared his destiny and were rediscovered quite recently, he expresses the mentality of those who were born in 1920, those who carried on the cause of Venka Malyshev and who had socialism in their flesh and blood.
We were the hard-headed children
of an unheard-of
revolutionDreamers at ten,
Teasers and poets at fourteen,
Entered in the lists of dead at twenty-five,
wrote Pavel Kogan. It was a generation of idealists in the
full sense of the word. They had stood in the enemy's path
and stopped his advance at the cost of their lives.
The destiny of the first generation that grew up under socialism was hard. Hard but heroic. This may be why some of the verse written by the poets of that generation has a prophetic ring. Vassifi Subbotin writes about it in How Wars End. He did not meet Pavel Kogan and did not read his verse before the war. None of PavefKogan's poems were published during his lifetime. Subbotin quotes some verse oy Kogan in his book, including the lines about boys who were to die on the Spree River.
``At first sight one finds it hard to imagine how he could have written such verse. I quote in full,'' writes Subbotin, ``two extracts from his unfinished novel in verse.
Boys in worn jackets,
Boys in pre-war felt boots,
Deafened by the roar of the bugles,
Zealous, small and angry,
_-_-_
~^^1^^ Translated by Dorian Rottenberg. - Ed.
82``These boys are my comrades,'' testifies Vassili Subbotin. ``The young Pavel Kogan seems to be writing about them, remembering all of them... All these soldier boys, and their youthful commanders, wearing not jackets but mud-splotched padded coats, chilled and hoarsed, barely keeping on their feet from weariness, have been depicted. All those who are buried on the Spree, in little moats in front of the Reichstag, at the war's last line.''
Equally prophetic is another poem of Kogan's, written long before the end of the war:
Roads have been cut through eternity,
Bridges span time,
In the name of our stern youth,
In the name of the planet,
Which we defended against the sea,
Against blood...
In the name of the war of Forty-Five.
One wonders where the words, ``In the name of the war of Forty-Five" could have come from. How does one account for this prescience? And for the prophecy of his personal fate? The name of Pavel Kogan was entered in the list of the dead in 1942. He died leading a reconnaissance unit in an attempt to break through the enemy ring near Novorossiisk long before the fateful age of twenty-five which he wrote about.
The question suggests itself: what is there about the verse of these poets who had no time to attain mature craftsmanship that lends it lasting value? How does one account for the recent explosion of interest in the work of these poets among readers, notably youth? Posthumous collections have come out of the poems by Kogan ( Thunderstorm), Mayorov (We\ a book of poems and letters of Vsevolod Bagritsky and a collection of poems by various poets called Through Time. These books do not gather dust in libraries. The mentality of their authors is consonant with that of the present-day Soviet youth. Critics in this country have already noted that these poems, written for the most part 83 before the war or in its early years, are remarkably in tune with the mood of the present-day literature.
This poetry has a contemporary ring because it expresses the ``joint of time'', the continuity ofideas and spirit and makes us aware of the throbbing pulse of its time.
These poems reveal to us the sources of the courage displayed m the war by the ``hard-headed children of an unheard-of revolution".
wrote Nikolai Mayorov.However may the years erode remembrance,
We'll be remembered over time's whole span
Because, for all the planet making weather,
We clothed in flesh and blood the proud word Man,^^1^^
He has accurately identified the sources of the heroism exhibited by the ``children of an unheard-of revolution" during the Great Patriotic War. These words explain the avid interest with which we read the documentary and fictional testimony to their heroic lives.
Their work was a poetic counterpart of the lofty moral standards, enthusiasm and faith in an idea brought forth by the ethics of the Revolution. Hence the uncompromising and exacting attitude towards life, other people and themselves that runs through their writing. This is noted by all the contributors to the collection Through Time who remember and used to know those poets well.
``Pavel Kogan combined tenderness and fierce intolerance. He disliked people whom he described as 'intermediate'. He said to me in a conversation, 'I cannot understand how it is possible to abstain from voting. You are either for or against something.' That was Pavel all over... He was harsh but very reserved in conversations with those he disliked, and he was tender but exceedingly exacting towards his friends and those who thought like him" (Sergei Narovchatov).
``The final lines of Pavel Kogan's poem 'Thunderstorm' express the philosophy of a whole generation with its youthful romanticism, passion, sweeping judgements and intolerance:
From childhood ovals I abhor,
From childhood angles I would draw!1
~^^1^^ Translated by Dorian Roftenberg. - Ed.
84 As he read these lines, Pavel chopped the air in front of him with his hand swinging it at a sharp angle to the right. That's the only way to live. No ovals. No compromises, no mercy on the enemy, no self-pity...'' (A.~Leontiev).Modern critics ask themselves why the sharp angles , why these high moral standards? From youth? Certainly youth has something to do with it. But above all it comes From the romantic ideals of the Revolution and its ethos.
The best representatives of that generation made revolutionary consciousness part of their morality, part of their nature. Revolutionary commitment, readiness to serve people, country and the Leninist Party formed the basis or their moral code in which the key concepts were truth, honesty, uprightness and kindness. They lived for the sake of the people, for their future, and they felt responsible for everything that was happening in the world.
``These people have been born not of this war, whatever it is, but of something large that came before the war. The Revolution, collectivisation, the whole way of life. The war just brought out these qualities of the people.'' This is where Alexander Tvardovsky saw the sources of the heroism of the prewar generation. These sources lie in the humane and just social set-up which fosters kindness and truth in people's hearts.
Our victory in the war is first and foremost a victory of the spirit. And the books about the people who won the war are at the same time books about the spiritual values of the Revolution. For a while high-mindedness, dignity and humanity were manifested in trivial matters and everyday life. But the time came when these moral values became a weapon, and kindness, ideological commitment and love made heroes.
These moral and ideological qualities of the ``generation of 1941" are reflected, not only in the writing of poets, most of whom died in the war, and not only in prose but also in diaries, letters, reminiscences and stories that tell us how that generation faced war.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 3``Captain Novikov? Novikov! That boy! I don't believe it! It can't be!' Gulko shouted and struck the table with 85 his fist so that the pencils on the map jumped, and turned away to the wall with red eyes full or tears? Major Gulko, battalion commander in Yuri Bondarev's The Last Shots, cannot believe that Captain Novikov, that ``half grownup, half-child'', the youngest captain in the regiment, is dead.
Captain Novikov knew almost nothing of life when he died. T haven't really lived... Sometimes it seems to me that I've done nothing but fight. Somewhere in the abyss of the past there is one year at the Mining Institute, books, table lamp. The past can be put in a single line. In the present there are only knocked out tanks,'' he was saying to his sweetheart a few hours before he was killed. He had realised that he loved her some time before when she was wounded and he was carrying her out of the zone of fire and ``for the first time in his life became aware of soft female flesh pressing against him".
Pay attention to this detail. Major Gulko had every ground for addressing him in a sentimental and pitying way, Keep a stiff upper lip, my boy,'' which so irritated Novikov by ``effete and unnecessary tenderness''. The inflection of his voice seemed to express love, tenderness and admiration at this twenty-year-old boy who went to the front straight from the classroom and stood up to the inhuman test of war.
But Captain Novikov is a man, not a boy, when in the flush of fierce battle he engages German tanks in an artillery duel and nothing in the world matters except the little black hole of the enemy gun and the quick movements of the enemy training the gun on him. ``It's him or me! Him or me!''
Nor is Captain Novikov a boy in the moral confrontation with Lieutenant Ovchinnikov, an ambitious individualist who is unable to stand the nervous stress and abandons his crippled guns and wounded soldiers. Novikov's merciless unforgiving look, and the shots of the battery which by some miracle went on fighting, made Ovchinnikov turn back hysterically and run towards his battery to his death. The scene in which Ovchinnikov runs across the field without bending to hide himself from the Germans whom he does not see, is written with harrowing impact. Novikov faces a terrible moral choice between seeing his comrade seized by the enemy or killing him. ``~`What's that? What's happening?' the questions flashed across Novikov's mind 86 as he checked his finger which was about to pull the trigger. And in the same instant, realising why the Germans were not firing on Ovchinnikov ('They want to get him alive') and disbelieving what he was doing ('Why? I have no right to! I have no right!') he pulled the trigger and emptied the whole magazine in one long burst.''
Novikov does not know that Ovchinnikov survived, to be taken prisoner by the Germans and to die a courageous death at their hands. He believes that he has killed Ovchinnikov and is tormented by the question whether he had the right to shoot him and whether he would have justified another person shooting him if he had found himself in a similar situation. He replies firmly, ``Yes, I would have justified him.'' He feels that this shot has set him apart from the rest and at the same time made people aware of the enormous responsibility he has assumed: THe was disposing of their lives and destinies in the name of something immeasurably large of which Novikov and all the people around him were vaguely aware.''
The soldiers don't mind Novikov's youth. They love him and believe in him utterly. They try to protect him frcim death: ``Without you we 11 go under, Comrade Captain!" They feel his mature maruy strength that entitles him to leadership. The source of Novikov's inner strength is not only his physical courage but, most important of all-and everybody feels it-the fact that his life is dedicated to serving something very large, his soldier's duty and his duty to his Motherland. The sense of enormous responsibility for the whole cause and for the people in his charge makes Novikov look older than his age, older than Lieutenant Alyoshin, who is of the same age, who joined the army later than his captain and adored and tried to imitate him, regarding him as an older and more experienced man. Alyoshin did not realise that they were of the same age. Novikov was unable to and could not afford to remain youthfully naive and to live and act on an impulse, like Alyoshin. He became an officer too early and was charged with commanding other men too early and during the three years since the start of the war he thought more about others than about himself. This made him the way we see him in the book, extremely reserved, even morose, and talking to people in ``his usual brusque manner that did not at all go with his pale youthful face".
87In some circumstances severity is necessary for the triumph of good. That is the nature of the severity displayed oy Captain Novikov in the harsh circumstances of the war. It is his severity and firmness with his men that made the cowardly Remeshkov a brave soldier and gave him confidence in the war. Without that confidence Remeshkov would surely have died. By being stern and strict to himself, and others Novikov contributes to the war effort. This attitude comes from Novikov's sense of responsibility before himself, society and other people.
The war was a severe moral trial for the generation brought up by socialism. In battle ``all the emotions are bare, no one can cover himself up with a false smile, no one can cheat, and people can read your feelings like the palm of their hand''. That is why Soviet writers devote so much attention to the moral conflicts in the war.
``There is a man in my platoon whom I hate. He is Mezentsev. He is a private and I am an officer and I must treat him fair. But I hate him,'' says First Lieutenant Motovilov in Baklanov's An Inch of Land.
Motovilov detests Mezentsev because he is ``one of those people who have all the difficult and dangerous things done For them by other people; others have fought for him, others have died for him, and he has come to believe that he is entitled to this right".
Motovilov and Novikov, new men made in the socialist mould, abhor everything puny, mean and selfish in people. And they are particularly intolerant of selfishness at war (``others have to pay witn their blood for those who spare themselves in battle''). Such is the law of war, and that is why team spirit, friendship and a sense of responsibility before other people are so important at the front. That is why Novikov is so merciless to Ovchinnikov who left his wounded comrades under enemy fire. For he had broken the most sacred rule of war.
``From the first conscious days none of us lived totally for our own sake. The Revolution, which washed our childhood with its light, called us to think about the whole mankind and live for its sake,'' reflects First Lieutenant Motovilov. Mezentsev, on the other hand, had long got used ro thinking only about his personal well-being. That is why he is regarded as an alien by Motovilov, although he went to school at the same time as Motovilov and Novikov, 88 attended the same YCL meetings and probably even made the right kind of speeches. Motovilov knows that Mezentsev's egoism could lead him to commit acts, not only of cowardTce but even of treachery. He is sure that as far as his ``inner qualities" are concerned, Mezentsev could well serve the Germans although ``outwardly'' he is ``all right''. Motovilov thinks it his duty to show to other people that Mezentsev is a ``rascal'' because ``we are not only fighting to defeat the nazis but also to ensure that life after war is human, truthful and pure".
Motovilov and Novikov are akin to Venka Malyshey in that all of them are Leninists in their hearts, in their moral attitudes and philosophy.
They have proved themselves to be so in the ordeal of the war. They displayed noble spirit and courage and at the same time kindness and purity in relation to their comrades, they fought fearlessly for their Motherland and were merciless towards the hated enemy.
Thinking about the private Panchenko who rescued him from flames at the risk of his own life, Lieutenant Motovilov ('An Inch of Land') says, ``A brother could have done it. But a brother is my kin. And what am I to him? We became brothers at the war. If we stay alive, we'll never forget it. For some reason I don't feel scared. The most the Germans can do to us is to kill us. But that, after all, is not the worst thing. They've been waging their vicious war on us for many years, but people have remained human.''
Ethics says that death obliges: death is the ultimate and exhaustive test of every person, for one cannot lie in the face of death. The Great Patriotic War was, for the nation and for every Soviet person, such an ultimate test of strength.
War has revealed, as perhaps nothing else has, the Soviet socialist spiritual values. If one were to put in a nutshell the main concern of the Soviet prose about the war, it is to trace and affirm the moral and ideological sources of Victory. It is not accidental that the best of recent books about the war are marked by keen moral and psychological analysis and deal with profound moral conflicts.
Contemporary prose about the war is trying to understand the mystery of self-sacrifice, the supreme manifestation of the human spirit. Why is it that of the two partisans 89 seized by the nazis (Sotnikov by Vasil Bykov) one, Rybak, became a traitor, while the other, Sotnikov, withstood the most dreadful test? The answer is to be found in the character of Sotnikov, who is a Communist in the true sense of the word. Sotnikov is superior to Rybak in terms of moral strength, being a far more mature and larger personality than Rybak. What gives scope to Sotnikov's individuality is the depth of his convictions and his mature commitment to the revolutionary communist ideas.
Of the recent Soviet prose works about the war one should first of all mention Yuri Bondarev's The Shore.
One cannot imagine such a novel being written one or two decades ago because the assessment of the war and the post-war world we find in it could only have been made today. The Shore is a fiercely committed novel. The author passionately argues for the humanistic view of the past war and, in a broader sense, on the march of history and the destinies of the post-war world and man.
The Shore reveals, more than any of Bondarev's previous works, a preoccupation with moral and philosophical questions. The philosophical message of the novel is. brought out by a bold juxtaposition of such different ``shores''' as the present world and the time of the war, and also on a different level, the shores of the native and alien countries.
I think the second part of the novel, entitled ``Heady Days'', about the last days of the war and the folly of love that overwhelms the heroes, is the best in the book and indeed the best of what Bondarev has written to date. But in the beginning the novel makes difficult reading. The description of two Soviet writers who are invited by a certain Frau Herbert to take part in a meeting and discussion in West Germany, where both had fought as soldiers and where they now observe in bewilderment the decaying ``Western world'', is not entirely convincing. The Great Patriotic War is something the author has lived through, while the modern West is something he has only seen. Hence the difference in the artistic levef of the ``war'' and ``Western'' episodes.
For all that, The Shore is undoubtedly a milestone in Bondarev's work and in recent Soviet literature. Like his earlier works, this novel is striking proof of his mastery at portraying war. In this particular case, the war is virtually 90 over, with only a few days remaining till its end. The heroes of the novel, after capturing Berlin, spend these last few days of the war enjoying a well-earned rest in a quiet tree-shaded town of Wenigsdorf. These blissful days, the days away from the war and constant danger when everyone expected to see something extraordinary happening in the world and to be dazzled by the blue sky of peace regained'', were followed by the tragedy of the last battles and deaths.
The novel reveals Bondarev's growing psychological insight and his audacity and skill in portraying man in extreme, morally trying situations of which there were so many during the war. The novel's heroes, Lieutenant Nikitin (a future writer) and his friend Lieutenant Kniazhko, are exposed to a situation which reveals their souls, mentality and moral attitudes.
And yet the main and, it seems to me, new quality of Bondarev's prose that is very much in evidence in The Shore is the philosophical depth of the writer's reflections about Man and history, and the destinies of humanism in a world torn into two camps following the ordeal of the past war. This philosophical preoccupation runs through the whole narrative, lending it scope, drama and dynamism and making the novel topically interesting.
The novel is highly relevant in the present-day conditions of detente and peaceful coexistence because its substance and its humanistic and ethical thrust put it within the context of the basic philosophical and ideological dispute of our time, the dispute about Man and his mission.
In the final chapter of the novel the main characters are engaged in a frank and open discussion with a wily opponent. They argue about fundamental human values, and about which view of the world best meets the aspirations of mankind. That discussion, presented in the novel as a documentary transcript, as it were, reveals two opposite and mutually exclusive models of society which, the author is convinced, increasingly compete, not only in the material and economic sphere, but also in the field of spiritual and ethical values.
The writer shows that our opponents are not unaware of the fact, and view it with some alarm.
``After the war West Germany has grown fat like a pig, and its brains are growing fat. People live in a 91 befuddling world of goods and are becoming soulless consumer machines... Pragmatism reigns supreme. America is the source and the model,'' says the critic and publicist Dietzmann, Nikitin's main opponent, in a TV discussion in West Germany. But he believes that ``refrigerators for all" is also the ultimate goal of socialism and that ``in a few years the Soviet Union would also grow fat and spiritual life would disappear: car, apartment, country house and refrigerator will become gods, like in the West. And you wfll gradually come to forget the Forties, the war and the suffering...
``The Revolution is a denial of amorality and assertion of morality, which implies faith in Man, struggle and, of course, conscience as a guide to action,'' replies Nikitin to Dietzmann. The answer is precise because one of the fundamental things that distinguishes developed socialism from the Western ``consumer society" is the rich spiritual and moral content of life under socialism which increasingly helps the individual to realise his potential.
TThe humanistic potential or socialism and the inherent humanity of the Soviet way of life were manifested with compelling force during the years of the Great Patriotic War when the soul of the nation and of every individual were put to a supreme test. This is the message stated explicitly in the polemic which it shows and implicitly in the whole idea content of the novel which is concerned with the great argument about Man and genuine values.
Bondarev puts the morality and humanity of his heroes to a supreme test. In The Shore, the officers and men of the Soviet Army are put to such a test when they confront the enemy, and not only in the field of battle, but in Germany, which they have liberated, and not only soldiers but the civilian population of the vanquished nazi Germany. The meeting comes after all the inhuman atrocities perpetrated by the nazis in the Soviet Union, in the temporarily occupied Soviet, and not only Soviet lands. The central figure in the novel is the Soviet soldier-liberator who has made all the way from Moscow to Berlin on foot, whose soul is scarred and lacerated with pain and hatred and who has fresh memories of the nazi outrages.
Can one imagine a greater test of humanity if one remembers all that had taken place? Their souls clamoured for vengeance. Bondarev's novel suggests that the human dignity, wisdom and moral strength with which the army 92 of a socialist country withstood that test is one of the most intriguing mysteries of history.
Proof of that is to be found in the scenes, drawn with stark psychological insight, that show the contempt and wrath provoked among the Soviet army men by the few in their midst who at the hour of triumph failed to live up to the image of the humane soldier-liberator. Among these few is Sergeant Mezhenin, with his supercilious grin and ``cold vacuous" eyes. He embodies the ``aggressive'' evil and ``shameless cynicism" which are particularly dangerous in time of war. Battery Commander Granaturov is another man who fails to live up to the moral test. The severe trials and strain have killed the human being in him, and the end of the war finds him a spiritually bereft person. True, there are extenuating circumstances in his case, but still the author believes that ne cannot be condoned.
As we learn from the novel, Granaturov's family met with a gruesome death at the hands of the nazis in Smolensk wnere his father had been a schoolmaster and his mother a teacher. Granaturov hardly ever told anyone about it, but Nikitin, who knew everything, understood and watched with alarm the terrible change that came over Granaturov each time he faced a German prisoner, even if it were only a snotty puppy from the Werwolf recruited by Hitler to defend Berlin in the last weeks of the war. Nikitin ``had never noticed this blind animal hatred in him before, and it occurred to him that Granaturov could easily kill a man with one blow. The same dark, irrational beastliness was displayed by Mezhenin towards that German woman in the garret. It was as if the germ of violence had infected Granaturov also, just like a mob is overcome by madness and lust for vengeance in the face of a weak and bewildered human being associated with the notion of enemy; a vanquished enemy offering feeble resistance sometimes provokes hatred more bitter than a strong enemy".
Overcome by vengefulness and intoxicated by a sense of license and apparent impunity, Mezhenin easily crosses the line of humanity and reveals the dark abyss of his soul, only to meet with steely moral condemnation and stern judgement of his comrades. Mezhenin's character is drawn in angry lusty colours and duly branded by the author. This character and the attitude towards him are another acid test, as it were; of the humanity and high morality 93 of the Soviet Army which liberated the people of Europe and Germany from nazism.
The confrontations between Nikitin and Mezhenin, Kniazhko and Granaturov, and the sharp conflicts that come to a tragic climax (Nikitin in a fit of range shoots Mezhenin, whose cowardice and meanness had caused Kniazhko's death) bring out the moral values of the army and the social system that had produced it. These values of socialist morality and of the national character are also to be found in the rank-and-file soldiers in the novel, for example, Sergeant Zykin, a former collective farmer whose innate sense of justice and conscience revolt against Mezhenin.
Even so, the central character that provides a moral frame of reference for the other characters is that of Lieutenant Kniazhko. He is a man of rare inner beauty and strength, a chivalrous man whose dazzling moral purity makes one think of Alyosha Karamazov, an Alyosha, that is, who joins the revolutionaries in a sequel to The Karamazov Brothers which Dostoyevsky never wrote. He embodies the eternal dream of Russian humanism about the perfect man of the future, a dream which Dostoyevsky expresses in these wonderful words: ``Voluntary, perfectly conscious and unforced sacrifice of oneself for the sake of all ... is a sign of the highest development of the individual... To lay down one's life for all of one's own free will, to go to the cross or to the stake for all is only possible for the most fully developed personality.''
This character, as well as the arguments advanced in the discussion with his West German opponent, bring home a message that is very important today: we are the heirs to the best and highest spiritual and moral values of mankind. We inherit these values and carry them forward at a new turn of the historical spiral.
This is the dividing line between the writers Nikitin and Samsonov portrayed in the novel. Samsonov is not prepared to answer the challenge with which the opponents face the two visiting Soviet writers. He fears the confrontation and is unsure of himself and his arguments in the discussion of such complex and difficult questions of our time.
The argument in the novel is over the humanistic legacy of Russian and world culture. Nikitin furiously resists Dietzmann's attempt to claim that heritage for we West with 94 a paradoxical purpose of justifying amorality and lack of spirituality. ``The vagueness of the borderline" between good and evil, ``this is what your Dostoyevsky is all about, this is the main message of his novels,'' says Dietzmann. ``I think Dostoyevsky is all about the quest of truth in man,'' counters Nikitin. The main idea of The Shore is that mankind's spiritual history is involved in the current ideological argument which has to dp with the most complex and profound categories of spiritual development, and we are sure to win that argument. For we have provided practical proof of our point of view, as witnessed by such characters as Kniazhko.
The writer sees that character as the embodiment of the best traditions of Russian culture and of democraticRussian intelligentsia. It is not by chance that he draws attention to the boy's high culture and intellect at every opportunity. And yet the character of Kniazhko, which is so close to an ideal, might have appeared bookish if we were not familiar with the ``hard-headed boys of an unheard-of revolution'', the martyrs and idealists born in the 1920s, from the earlier books of Yuri Bondarev, Vasil Bykov and Grigori Baklanov, from the poetry of those who never returned from the war-such as Mikhail Kulchitsky, Nikolai Mayorpv and Pavel Kogan-frorn numerous memoirs and oral stories about the first generation of men reared by the Revolution and by socialism almost all of whom died in the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. They were a generation of highminded people, and The Shore celebrates that generation in the character of Lieutenant Kniazhko. It is a character masterfully conceived and drawn, and it could well be ranged with the other famous characters of our life and books, such as Nikolai Ostrovsky's Pavel Korchagin and Mikhail Sholokhov's Davidov, Fadeyev's Young Guard and Polevoi's Meresyev, Venka Malyshev in Nilin's ``Cruelty'', the teacher Duishen in Aitmatov's story of the same title, Sotnikov in Bykov's story, and Mikhail Pryaslin in Fyodor Abramov's trilogy.
Lieutenant Kniazhko was very young, with a slim feminine waist, and he looked so neat and dapper in his tunic and shoulder belt which hugged his body crosswise, with his tender girlish green eyes that each time he appeared before his men he gave an impression of something fragile and gleaming, like a beam of light in green water.'' This is the portrait of the youthful soldier whose gentle exterior 95 concealed extraordinary inner strength and energy, ``the strong will of an ascetic" which commanded obedience.
At the most dramatic moments we are aware that Kniazhko's moral authority in the battery commanded by Granaturov is unchallengeable. This moral authority flows from his unique sense of justice and perfect moral and physical courage to which he had trained himself. ``In the early minutes of tank attacks Kniazhko would stand at full height near the guns, his face set in an expression of grim determination; he would stand in this way for about five minutes, without bending at the sound of explosions nearby and the whizzing of shell fragments over his nead; growing pale, he stared at the tank guns belching fire as if trying his destiny by exposing himself to this strange and senseless risk in front of the whole platoon.'' In this way Kniazhko ``was killing the rabbit in him so as to be calm in battle.
The climax of the novel shows the heroic feat of Kniazhko performed out of his deep conviction that unnecessary bloodshed should be prevented. When a group of German youths, terrorised by SS men, panic-stricken and mad with fear, tries to put up a resistance to the Soviet troops surrounding them, Kniazhko decides on an act that his conscience prompts him, and neither Nikitin, nor Mezhenin, nor the battery commander Granaturov are able to stop him. ``Who does he think he is? An angel? A saint? Who needs it?" queried a bewildered infantry captain to whose rescue Kniaznko's battery came in that battle.
``No shots were fired. The howling of people in the forestry house continued. Kniazhko, short and slender, outwardly calm and himself looking like a boy, was crossing the meadow, walking with a slight lilt and waving a handkerchief.'' He was walking towards his death in order to save the German youths surrounded in the forestry house who would surely have died if they tried to resist. He walked until a white cloth held by an unsure and timid hand appeared in the window of the attic, only to be snatched back. Then ``a horrible stifled cry inside the attic" was heard and almost instantly a gun was fired and in reply came bursts of machine-gun fire from the attic, bringing death...
``I've never since met people like Lieutenant Kniazhko, I still miss him,'' says Nikitin decades later to Frau Herbert who has invited him to a literary meeting in Hamburg and 96 who turns out to be none other than Emma with whom he had a madly romantic love affair. Kniazhko, the love affair, Emma's brother, the Werwolf youth who had been saved from Granaturov's senseless vengeance by Nikitin and Kniazhko, the moral atmosphere of kindness which the Soviet liberating troops brought to Germany, and their intolerance of any evil that contradicted the atmosphere which our people took for granted-all these are to Emma, and to the reader, the most telling, if unuttered, arguments in the Soviet writer's dispute with the West German critic Dietzmann. Nikitin, and with him, the Soviet writer Yuri Bondarev, win the argument.
While some of the answers to the moral and philosophical problems given in the novel are more convincing than others, the very fact that The Shore boldly and rightly raises these crucial philosophical questions of the century makes it topical and assures it a long life.
The novel, along with all the best Soviet prose about the Great Patriotic War, is part and parcel of the moral and philosophical quests which the literature of socialist realism is conducting with such passion.
[97] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Four __ALPHA_LVL1__ The Closest of Links __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1Prose about the village occupies a special place in the moral and philosophical quests which Soviet literature is pursuing so intensively and consistently.
Rural life has traditionally been an object of close concern to Russian writers. The life of the peasants, of the people generally, has provided inspiration for Russian culture and for the great Russian literature of the 19th century.
But apart from tradition, there must be contemporary circumstances and social needs that have lately given such prominence to the rural theme in the Soviet literature and criticism.
The recent years have seen the blossoming of the talents of such prose writers as Fyodor Abramov, Victor Astafiev, Vassili Belpv, Boris Mozhayev, Evgeny Nosov, Sergei Krutilin, Vassili Shukshin, Victor Likhonpsov, and Valentin Rasputin, and the lyrical element in their prose has become more pronounced. At the same time village life has inspired some prose fiction of social analysis. The examples that spring to mind are Fyodor Abramov's novel The Pryas/ins, and the stories ``Pelageya'' and ``Alka'',Vladimir Fomenko's The Memory of Soil, Elizar Maltsev's Enter Every Home, Mikhail Alexeyev's The Cherry Slough, Chinghiz Aitmatov's Mother Earth and Farewell, Gyulsary!, and Vladimir Tendryakov's Passing.
These two streams of prose are not, of course, separated by the Wall of China and one cannot put them in watertight compartments. And yet one cannot help noticing that, like, say, Mikhail Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned, most of the above-mentioned works of social analytical prose cannot be accommodated under the heading of ``village prose''. That heading is too narrow because most of these works 98 raise problems and draw characters going far beyond specifically rural concerns.
For all the diversity of genres and individual manner, both the ``lyrical'' and ``analytical'' prose about rural life share a keen sense of history, look at the historical destinies of the village and try to discern a pattern in its development from the past to the modern times. The village has been described from a historical point of view in the revolutionary and pre-revolutionary time (Georgi Markov's Siberia and Sergei Zalygin's Salt Valley), at the time of collectivisation (On the Irtysh by Sergei Zalygin and the dilogy of Ivan Melezh), in the trying war and post-war years (books by Fyodor Abramov, Victor Astafiev, Vladimir Fomenko, Mikhail Alexeyev, Sergei Krutilin and others) and in the period of the 1950s (Elizar Maltsev's Enter Every Home). The prose about the past of the Soviet village gives a close-up of the peasant, collective farmer who has withstood the test of the war, the economic hardship of the pre-war and post-war years and had kept his integrity and the appealing moral beauty and strength of a toiler, master of his native land.
The question increasingly relevant today is how fully and consistently the historical approach is being applied by our prose about the village, and how true a picture of reality it gives.
On the other hand, for all that they address themselves to the past rather than the present, the books about the village have a contemporary relevance.
In recent years our society has been increasingly concerned with the spiritual and moral aspects of the life of the grassroots as manifested in the past and present, notably their relationship to native history and native land. The so-called ``village prose" cannot be adequately interpreted without bearing in mind the growing self-awareness of the nation. The process is complex and calls for a thoughtful approach. Literature is not the only field in which it is manifested. Literature, in particular the lyrical ``village prose'', merely gives an expression to that social need by moving on from social and economic analysis to the socio-- psychological, moral and spiritual depths.
Prose about the village Deing written today is permeated with the poetry of nature, attachment to one's land and country. Nature and history, and the beauty of the native 99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1980/OHV203/20070407/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.04.06) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ land perform functions far more important than adding artistic expressiveness. They are a key moral factor in contemporary books about the village.
``Once more the native place greeted me with reserved whisper of the alderthickets,'' reads the opening sentence in a story by Vassili Belov. ``The white scaly roofs of my old village came into view, and then my own house with cracked corners. I used to climb up these corners to the rooftop, in my tireless pursuit of height, and look at the misty jagged outline of the forests; I hid my simple treasures in the cracks in the logs. From this pine fortress and these wonderful gates I sallied forth into the large and menacing world, giving a naive vow never to return; but the farther and faster I walked away, the more fiercely I was drawn back...
``As of old, the long perilous log-path leads me to the woody hillocks, and once more I listen to the sounds of the summer forest. The old pines rustle above me solemnly and wisely, and I might not exist as far as they are concerned. It seems to me that I can hear the grass growing in the fields, feeling every grass blade; I remove my sweatsoaked boots at one pull and run barefoot on the red sand bank.
``My quiet native place, as ever, you stop me getting old and heal my soul with your green silence!''
Russian nature is for Belov, as for Nosov and Astafiev, associated above all with Motherland.
Perhaps one of the first modern writers to take up the theme is Vladimir Soloukhin. His Dew Drop, just as The Vladimir Byways, defy being pigeonholed as a story, novel, or a collection of essays. Rather, it is what the author calls ``lyrical notes''. They tell of the life of the small village of Olepino. It is a tiny village of some thirty-six homesteads, no different from other villages near Vladimir. But Soloukhin had an inner need to tell us about that particular village because ``to me the village of Olepino is the only one in the world; I was born and reared nere.'' The book is a journey ``to the most wonderful of all the fairy lands, the land of childhood. The keys to it have been thrown away and are so irretrievably lost that you would not be able to get even a glimpse of a trifling footpath till the end of your life. Come to think of it, no paths in that land can be trifling. Everything there is full of 100 meaning. He who has forgotten what it was like there, and has forgotten that it ever existed, is the poorest person on Earth".
Soloukhin brings such warmth and poetic feeling to his description of his native village of Olepino that the book captivates you and carries you away. Here, for instance, is Soloukhin describing a dawn: ``Crimson clouds, round and inflated, floated across the sky with the solemnity of swans; crimson clouds sailed across the river surface lending their colour not only to the water, and to the slight mist hanging over it, but even to the wide glazed lily leaves...
``An old fisherman was walking across the field carrying a large flaming red fish he had caugnt.
``A haystack, strawricks, a tree in the distance, a grove, the old man's shelter of branches-all these things were seen in bold relief and vivid colour, as if that glorious morning had something to do with our eyesight, and not with the great sun playing.''
Soloukhin's prose, like that of Belov, is imbued with the poetic feeling of the native land, rural life and peasant labour.
Perhaps the village kids are most keenly sensitive to the beauty of farm labour. Perhaps one of the main reasons of the success of Soloukhin's first books of prose is his poetic description of farm labour as seen by himself as a child. Many of his impressions are out of date, as the writer's childhood was in the pre-war years and since then collective farms have acquired many new features. And yet the book derives its value precisely from the fact that Soloukhin writes about what he himself has experienced and what he has seen and has come to love about his native country. Judging from the book, few things have been so vividly etched on his memory as his first acquaintance with ``great farm work'', the harvesting and thresning of grain, sowing and grass mowing.
The descriptions of threshing and mowing account for some of the most poetic pages in his book. The writer has a knack for conveying in precise and tangible words what seems impossible to convey. He makes us see dew drops on the grass catching the morning sun rays, some twinkling with deep green, some pure crimson and some opaquely luminescent. And this varicoloured twinkling combining with the colours of the meadow flowers. One can write, 101 says Soloukhin, about the dark path left behind one when one walks on a white dewy grass, and about the beauty of an ordinary horse-tail plant strewn with dew and washed in sunrays, and about many other things, but one cannot convey the state of a person who walks in a flowering dewy meadow in the early morning.
But Soloukhin's prose miraculously recaptures that state. In some of the book's most vivid pages, the once famous ageing mower of Olepino, Ivan Vassilievich Kunin, goes out to mow with the young men. He outstrips one, then another, and another, ``He paused, breathing heavily. The old man was gasping for breath but his eyes were bright and happy. Seizing a handful of grass, the old man wiped his moist red face, leaving tiny grass blades sticking to his wrinkled old skin so that one could not tell whether his face was moist with sweat or the tears of joy.
``'I can do it!' the old man said with a break in his voice and sank weakly on to the ground. Again and again, he wiped tears on his face with handfuls of grass making little sobbing sounds from time to time.
``I was ahead of him and wondering what there was about the eternal work of the farmer, admittedly taxing and not the noblest of jobs, that made man so attached to it that even in feeble old age he took the sickle with which he used to work in his youth and went mowing, and wept for joy.''
Shortly after the ``lyrical notes" about Olepino were published, another book appeared that was similar to it in spirit and flavour, yet in some ways different. Entitled Lipyagi, this book by Sergei Krutilin is neither a long story nor a novel. It had no coherent plot running through the whole book. Rather, it is a collection of lyrical novellas. A collection of short stories then? By no means. Lipyagi has a wholeness about it, and is permeated with a single mood and an abiding love for the old village of Lipyagi and its inhabitants.
The author subtitled his book ``Notes of a Village Teacher''. And although we suspect that the village teacher Andrei Vassilievich who tells the story is a fictitious character, and realise that it is fiction, not documentary prose, we cannot get rid of a feeling that the chronicle of the village of Lipyagi kept by the local teacher is a document, not a pook of fiction.
102Everyone who has grown up in the country, where the immediate world is confined to the village and ends at its gates, remembers the story of the village and the paternal abode where one grew up and where his ancestors have lived for centuries. The history is passed on by word of mouth in the shape of richly poetic and enthralling stories.
The impact of Lipyagi owes much to the fact that it evokes a poetic image of the author's native place and of the ancient Russian land.
One of the novellas in the book is entitled ``The Ballad of a Well''. It is indeed a ballad, written in classic elevated style, about the well-sweeps and about the many -songs and ditties the various kinds of well-sweeps inspired and how carefully all this folklore has been kept and passed from century to century by the villagers.
Krutilin's Lipyagi is, for all its lyricism, a starkly realistic book that does not make for light reading. This is what differs it from Soloukhin's Dew L)rop. Echoes of the difficulties through which the village lived at the time are heard in Dew Drop but on the whole social comment in that poetic book is muted. Krutilin in his book broods a great deal on how to improve life in the village.
His hopes lie with the hard-working people of Lipyagithe old man Pechenov, the blacksmith Biryuk, Avdei, the godfather of the central character, the teacher, and the tractordriver Nazarka. The author speaks about them with warm affectionate humour, sprinkling his narrative with funny stories in a way one speaks of people who are near and dear to one.
One of the chapters, called ``He Who Goes Slow Gets There First'', is about the local wag and prankster Avdei. It is full of hilarious laughter and good humoured irony, and it ends with a suggestion, made in jest, that it would be a good idea to have a monument built to the farmer Avdei.
And then, turning serious, the author goes on to reflect that if anyone deserves a monument it is the Russian working woman. Imagine a bronze figure of a woman on a granite pediment. Her face should make one think of a mother's face-gentle, beautiful and a little sad. ``But the main message should not be in the expression of the face or the figure. I think that bronze woman should have hands like the nands of my sister Maria, huge hands with swollen 103 veins; and the bronze Maria should not hide these hands, she should display them proudly so that the succeeding generations of the people of Lipyagi should take their hats off to these hands.''
Krutilin might well have said with legitimate pride about himself what Alexander Yashin wrote in the story ``I'll Treat You to Rowanberries": ``I am the son of a peasant... I am concerned with everything that happens on this land in which I have trodden many paths with my bare feet; and on its fields which I used to till with a ploughshare and the grasslands which I worked with my sickle and where I gathered grass into ricks.''
The strong and intimate links of that prose with the life of the grassroots is due in large part to the fact that much of it is being written by sons of peasants, the flesh and blood of the working people who inherit the great traditions of Russian culture and, thanks to the October Revolution, have been given an opportunity to reveal their talent. Their prose naturally expresses the spiritual values of the life or the working people which have been accumulated by the tillers of soilover the centuries.
These prose writers' handling of language is a sure sign that they are portraying rural life faithfully and do not only profess to be but in fact are true to the spirit of the working people.
Vassili Belov has a story with an alliterative title `` Kolokolena''. This is a nickname they gave to the old woman Paranya on account of her being an irrepressible and glib talker.
It takes for Belov's perfect knowledge of the vernacular and the peasant soul to create a flesh-and-blood character of a peasant woman exclusively through her speech.
When you read Belov's prose you get a feeling that it is the Russian village itself speaking about its life and cares. It is recorded selfknowledge of the village. This is true of the novella ``All in a Day's Work'', The Carpenter's Stories and of such books as Beyond the Three Rapids, Hillock, Eternal Bend and even of his first collection of stories, A Hot Summer, which came out in Vologda, where he was born and lives. He has his roots deep in that land, where he spent a hungry wartime childhood and began his working lire as a peasant. He went to a vocational^school, worked as a carpenter and as a farmer before joining the staff of 104 a regional newspaper and then going on to study at the Literary Institute in Moscow. When he published his first book of poems called My Forest Village, the poet Alexander Yashin, who also comes from the Vologda area, told him: ``You should write prose.''
Language is the basic element of literature. Sometimes we say that a certain writer has a good ear for the vernacular. To say that about Belov is an understatement. The vernacular Russian language is in his bones. The rich-flavoured limpid native Russian speech of his stories casts a spell on you. They are imbued with love for nature, the Russian countryside and the native village. Belov is keenly perceptive of the smells of the northern forest, the spare colours of the northern Russian landscape and the special talk of the northern Russian villages. His descriptions of farm labour are so vivid that it seems that after reading his description of hay gathering in ``The Village of Berdyaika" even a person who has never held a rake in his hands would be able to make hayricks. Few contemporary writers can convey so sensitively and naturally the elemental poetry of the farmer's work and the beauty of what man creates with his hands. Work in Belov's stories is a truly creative, even mysterious process. This is the feeling one gets reading about the village carpenters building a house in ``The Village of Berdyaika".
Belov has inside knowledge of rural life. That is why the characters which inhabit his stories are living characters of the people. He belongs to the same tribe, and he thinks it is his filial duty to be their ``spokesman'' in literature and to tell the truth about them. He introduces us to the poetic though anything but idyllic world of the present-day village life.
Belov's prose is marked not only by love of the village and knowledge of its people and minutiae of life, but also by anguish over the wrongs of life, and all the economic and other sorts of hardships through which the village, especially in the north, has lived in the post-war years. An example in point is the novella titled ``All in a Day's Work'', which in my view is one of the most significant books about the village to come out for some time.
The story is marked by considerate and respectful attitude towards man. The narrative gets off to a leisurely start as the writer tells with affection and gentle humour 105 about the life of Ivan Afrikanovich and his numerous family. The writer makes deliberate pauses in the narrative in order to describe in detail the calm progress of peasant life, and no detail is too trivial for him. He describes everyday life with thoroughness, and his prodigious artistic and linguistic memory and perfect knowledge of the peasant life and peasant characters help him to recreate the rural scenes in a tangible authentic manner. Authenticity of detail, however, is not an end in itself for him. It is designed to bring out the spiritual meaning of the life he describes.
In a sense, the story is a lyrical celebration of love that forever links Ivan Afrikanovich and his wife Katerina who bore him nine children. Ivan Afrikanovich's love for his wife is portrayed with dramatic impact, tenderness and purity.
``~`I'm sorry, Katerina, what with one thing and another, I didn't visit you,'" says Ivan Afrikanovich disconsolately visiting the grave of his wife who died an untimely death. ``I've brought you some rowanberries. You used to like to pick them in autumn. You want to know how I'm making out without you? Well, I'm getting used to it... You know, Katerina, I don't drink anymore nowadays, almost never, must be getting old, and I don't want to anyway. You used to scold me... The kids are all alive and well. I sent Katyusha to Tanya and Mitka, Antoshka is at the building school, will stand on his own feet soon... Mishka and Vasvatka I sent to the orphanage, don't be cross with me for that... So that's the way everything turned out, old girl. I was a fool, didn't take care of you. I don't have to tell you that... And now I'm alone... I walk over you, it's like walking on burning coals to me, forgive me. It's bad without you, unbearable. So wretched I thought I'd follow you... It's a little better now... And I remember your voice... And I remember everything about you, Katerina, so well that... Where are you Katerina? My sweet darling... Katerina, I don't need anything now... What's my life now ... brought you some rowanberries ... Katya darling...'
``Ivan Afrikanovich began to tremble. No one saw how grief wrenched him on the cold mound on which grass had not yet grown. No one saw that.''
The author traces the spiritual beauty of such characters as Ivan Afrikanovich and Katerina to what he believes to be its sources, in the timeless flow of rural life which partakes of the purity of nature and labour.
106The poetry of nature and farm labour which permeate the story are a permanent state of soul for Ivan Afrikanovich. The writer has oeen able to recreate the hero's oneness with the world of nature and his work in it. Listen to the conversations Ivan Afrikanovich conducts with himself in his mind.
Here he is pausing to admire the sunrise en route to work. ``Rising. Rises every day, all the time. Can't stop it, it's beyond our power.''
On another occasion he sees a motionless sparrow on the snow. ``Are you alive, little fellow?" asked Ivan Afrikanovich. ``Looks as if you are frozen stiff.'' He took the sparrow into his warm palm, breathed on him and put him under his jacket. ``Sit here for a while, you invalid. Warm yourself for free. And then we'll see what we can do.''
``A crow perched on a high pole cawed; Ivan Afrikanovich looked up and said, 'Why are you hollering, stupid? No point in hollering for nothing.'
'Nearby a fox was going about its poaching business in the morning quiet, undeterred by the presence of man. Ivan Afrikanovich feasted his eyes on the fox for a moment, then started to walk across the dear snow-crusted fields. His feet were light, and he ceased to be aware of himself, merging with the snow and the sun, the blue and hopelessly distant sky and all the smells of coming spring.
``There were frost, sun and space. The tranquil villages in the distance smoked their chimneys, roosters crowed and heathcocks rumbled, and the white frost-hardened snows were shimmering. Ivan Afrikanovich walked on and on, his footsteps sending a ringing sound through the crusted snow, and the time stood still for him. He had no thoughts, just like the little one who lay in the cradle and smiled and for whom the difference between dream and non-dream did not yet exist.
``For both of them, there was neither beginning nor end now.
I have quoted from Belov's story at some length because the language of his prose is valuable for its own sake and helps us to grasp the hidden message of the story.
The story is dramatic and has a sad end. And yet its mood is bright because of the presence of the characters drawn with affection and with bold and deft touches. These characters convince us that the farmer still cherishes his 107 land and enjoys working it, which means that eventually the land will reward its tiller.
There is another hidden message in the story which one would like to have been more explicitly stated. The message is implicit in the very title of the story, ``All in a Day's Work . It is idiomatic and filled with sad irony.
``All in a day's work" is Ivan Afrikanovich's favourite phrase and he uses it as an answer to all the vicissitudes and difficulties. When his son-in-law tries to persuade him to move to town, Ivan Afrikanovich replies that there is ``no warmth, no solace" there. The latter challenges him and says, ``Are you getting much warmth and solace here?" ``It's none too warm over here either, Mitya,'' concedes Ivan Afrikanovich, ``but it's all in a day's work.''
It would be wrong to think that because the author's sympathies lie with his hero he approves of everything in him. The author has no use for passivity and resignation in the face of circumstances which are part of Ivan Afrikanovich's nature. Ivan Afrikanovich's favourite phrase, which expresses the traditional resignation of peasants, grates on Belov. I have a hunch that ``All in a Day's Work" was written with a secret hope of awakening the civic consciousness in Ivan Afrikanovich and making him work more consciously towards public and personal well-being.
And yet I hazard the suggestion that neither this, nor even the story of the vicissitudes of the life of Ivan Afrikanovich and his numerous family form the writer's (and the reader's) main concern in this story.
Belov's prose touches a sore point in the public consciousness which lends it topical interest and lasting value.
In the final analysis, he raises the same nagging question which he asks at the end of his lyrical confession of love for his native countryside: ``My quiet native place, as ever, you stop me getting old and heal my soul with your green silence! But will the silence last forever?''
``I sit down to have a smoke leaning my back against a warm haystack,'' the author goes on, ``and it occurs to me that in another half century the birch-trees would be needed only in songs, and songs die like people.''
The same anxious thought is encountered in the stories of Belov and of other writers: what if ``in another half century the birch-trees would be needed only in songs?''
Belov asks himself with partiality, ``Perhaps it should 108 be that way? Villages disappear to be replaced by merry, bustling cities.''
Even if he agrees that ``it should be that way'', he does so only with his head. His heart behaves in a different way, and the moisture on his lips is tears, and not the sweat brought by the hot noon sun.
This is the question that lends relevance to the prose of Belov and other ``village writers'', even when they write about the past. The question has to do with the future of the sanctuary of beautiful nature and rustic life. In this age of runaway social, scientific and technological change the question increasingly impresses itself on public consciousness.
One should not underrate the humanistic implications of the question about the values of nature, man's contact with it and the transformation of land in our age. As Communists we are entitled to feel responsible for the kind of world we are going to leave to the future generations. It is equally important, however, that having raised that question, we should arrive at the right answers that are in keeping with historical truth.
The so-called ``village'' prose, especially its lyrical ``stream'', is in a way an emotional reaction against the gigantic social change called the scientific and technological revolution.
The themes of ``Man and Nature'', ``Man and Land'', and of the ``natural'', ``whole man'', 9f the native place and of Motherland are timeless themes in literature. But they have acquired a particular poignancy and at times a polemical edge in present-day Soviet literature. Ivan Afrikanovich in Belov's story is a ``man of nature" who embodies the universal moral values worked out by the nation of tillers over millennia. Ivan Afrikanovich is largely shown in his relationship with nature while his relations with the world are barely hinted at and, as has been noted above, his social attitude is passive rather than active. In order to drive home his main message Belov prefers to ignore certain things. Alexander Yashin's ``Wedding in Vologda" has a character which in some ways anticipates Ivan Afrikanovich. Grigory Kirillovich, a Vologda farmer, is a relative and ``best man" of the bride. ``A man who has been around, with an irrepressible mischievous temperament, he went through many European countries during the war as a liberator, and his memory was a grab-bag of by-words and jokes from the 109 best man's luggage into which he liked to dip from time to time.''
Ivan Afrikanovich (like other Belov characters) knows as many by-words and sayings, but Belov prefers to overlook the important circumstance that his hero also was in many European countries during the war as a liberator, which must have left some mark on him. The reason is to be found in the polemical thrust of the story which is concerned with protecting against the winds of the century the values of the peasant character that are the product of hundreds and thousands of years of land-tilling. These winds of the century which make the writer's heart ache for the values he holds dear, are in the final analysis linked with the speeding of the scientific and technological progress which is having a far-reaching effect on the rural life as well, particularly in the conditions of collective agriculture.
When ``All in a Day's Work" first saw the light of day, critics concentrated on the surface layer of the narrative which speaks about the economic difficulties peasants in the north of Russia experienced in the 40s and 50s. As that time grows more remote, however, and viewed in the context of other works by Belov (Beyond the Three Rapids, The Carpenter's Stories) and other writers (V. Rasputin's The Last Break and some novellas by V. Likhonosov), ``All in a Day's Work" increasingly reveals its deeper meaning. It is nothing less than the concern for the destiny of the village and its values in the 20th century and the profound social and scientific and technological changes it has brought. In a broader sense, it is the relationship between nature as a human value and what Gorky called ``the other nature'', i. e. the man-made • social and technological environment.
The fact that our writers have addressed themselves to that set of questions is natural and timely. The growing rate of scientific and technological change and the resulting urbanisation and intensification of labour, in particular, industrialisation of agriculture, are inevitable, irreversible and historically obligatory for mankind. Without these things the human race cannot survive, let alone advance. These are worldwide processes, and they include industrialisation of farm labour which dramatically cuts rural populations that feed everyone, hence a drastic change of the rural scene.
This is reflected in the Party's rural economic policies clearly formulated back at the March 1965 Plenary Meeting 110 of the CPSU Central Committee and elaborated at the 24th CPSU Congress. The Party seeks to harness the scientific and technological revolution to enhance the vast opportunities offered by the socialist mode of farming. These policies have already yielded considerable economic and social results.
The industrial, economic and social progress of the village makes the question of spiritual and moral values particularly urgent for it at this juncture. Concern about it, as concern about nature, the forests and meadows, concern for preserving the land intact for the future generations in the face of the scientific and technological revolution, so that people of the future should need birch-trees as they need songs-all this is a sacred civic duty, a duty to which the Party and the state accord great importance.
The rapid social, technological and psychological change going on in the present-day village faces contemporary prose about rural life with a complex set of problems. Is the whole of our literature-which means fiction as well as documentary and essay writing-prepared to tackle that range of problems with all their implications?
Most important of all, is its social and philosophical awareness high enough to enable it to give correct and historically valid answers to them?
This subject was taken up in a dialogue called ``Harmony Is Inevitable" between the writer Chinghiz Aitmatov and the critic Leonid Novichenko published oy Literaturnoya gazeta on January 1, 1973-
Leonid Novichenko started the discussion by stressing that Western scientists, philosophers and publicists are worried about the dangers confronting nature and man in connection with the rapid industrial growth which, in the capitalist countries, is not controlled. Noting that this country, oeing a socialist country, is in a different position because our economy is run on a planned basis and serves not the selfish private interests but the good of society as a whole, Leonid Novichenko went on to say: ``It seems to me, however, that one should not dismiss the objective difficulties and dangers that may arise in this country too if we fail to give due attention to long-term public and government control over all the manifestations or scientific and technological progress and urbanisation.''
Chinghiz Aitmatov went along with that statement and agreed with the critic that his own story The White Steamer 111 combined concern for the moral issues of our time with the problem of man's attitude to nature and sought to warn people against ill-considered tampering with nature.
``It may sound paradoxical,'' said Aitmatov, ``but we must learn to use the advantages offered by our social system. I think literature should raise its voice not only in defence of nature in general, but should particularly concern itself with the moral and psychological aspects of the human soul that are involved in the perception of nature. Literature must address itself to this problem, it is its duty to do so, its mission.''
Echoing him, the critic said, ``Literature, like the whole system of our public education, must contribute to overcoming as soon as possible the parasitic and shortsightedly pragmatic attitudes to nature which are growing more harmful as man's technological potential increases. That psychology will be replaced-is already being replaced in our society-by a new attitude to the natural world, a thrifty and friendly attitude full of intelligent concern for living nature as a social wealth that must be preserved and multiplied.''
At the same time the participants in the dialogue `` Harmony Is Inevitable" underline a new quality in the attitude to nature that follows from our revolutionary and transformative attitude to life, and that is the need ``for a synthesis, a combination of an active and creative attitude to nature and the 'old' appreciation of its poetry, its timeless beauty, an ability, if you like, to contemplate nature in a kindly and responsive way.''
A break in that dialectical unity and exaggeration of one side at the expense of the other upsets the harmony between man and nature and leads either to stark technocratic pragmatism or to sentimental-romantic conservatism that rejects social, scientific and technological progress as a matter of principle. Meanwhile, as the participants in the dialogue justly stressed, man's transformative role, a revolutionary and at the same time thrifty attitude to the environment is the key factor because man by his very nature cannot just contemplate nature, he must transform it. Failure to appreciate that results in a hankering for ``pristine nature" and old and outdated forms of rural life.
We would better understand the moral quests of the present-day literature (and not only of the ``village'' prose, for the prose, say, of Yuri Kazakov, Georgi Semyonov and 112 even of Victor Likhonosov cannot be wholly referred to it) if we put them in the social and philosophical context of pur age. The writer Fypdor Abramov put that succinctly in the discussion on ``The Present-Day Village and Literature'', stressing the social aspect of the problem: ``The close attention to the moral sources of the rural man is without precedent in literature. This is due to the dramatic changes we are living through, and which are comparable in scope to the period of collectivisation. The whole face of peasant Russia, with which our spiritual, ethical and aesthetic values are closely associated, is changing. The old village, with its northern catlte-like houses which strike the imagination, is vanishing. The peasant himself is changing rapidly, the peasant who followed the Bolshevik Party and the working class to win the Civil War, the peasant who bore the brunt of the Great Patriotic War, the peasant who restored the land after the war.
``These people and this village are going, and the writer today naturally wants to take a close look at the vanishing world and record what it used to be like. This interest , cannot be attributed merely to a predilection for antiquated modes of life, because the problems that come under scrutiny are not concerned with the village alone, but with our development as a nation, with our historical destinies.''
Vinnichenko challenges Fyodor Abramov: ``It is true of course that one cannot fully grasp the present without understanding the past. The trouble is that the authors of many contemporary prose works turn to the past and consider it in terms of the past shutting their eyes to the important processes taking place in the life of the collective farms today. It cannot be gainsaid that in its long and arduous history our peasantry has worked out intransient spiritual values. But these values are important not in themselves but in the context of our advance. This is what one should write about, rather than endlessly lament the passing of the old village. All the more so if one bears in mind that the collective farmers themselves are not pining for the vanishing past but embrace all the new and progressive changes in their life.''
So, passions run high among the writers who have devoted themselves to describing the rural scene. The critics want to come up with a definite and all-embracing social and philosophical stand in these arguments. They must grasp all __PRINTERS_P_115_COMMENT__ 5---835 113 the profound implications and contradictions of the historical cataclysm the village is living through, and the echoes it sends through contemporary literature.
It is the right (and duty!) of literature to understand and record not only what is dying but also what is nascent. And that is where the writer's position comes in. It is important whether his stand is broad and consonant with historical development, and the aspirations of the peasantry and the whole Soviet people or nostalgic, sentimentalromantic, to use Lenin's expression. In the former case, he would draw a realistic, and true picture of the historical destinies of our village, a faithful picture of the old and passing village, treating with care its genuine humanistic values and at the same time discovering new typical characters and circumstances expressive of the dynamics of life. In the latter case, the picture of life is bound to be distorted, and the emphasis to be shifted to the past portrayed in an idealised, idyllic, sentimental-romantic light.
To work out a valid stand, the writer must resist two extremes-a one-sided, flat and nihilistic attitude to the spiritual wealth of nature and rural life, to the work ethic of the peasant, an attitude that ignores Lenin's objective assessment of the peasant as proprietor and worker at the same time; and the equally unrealistic, illusory, pastoral view of village life that idealises antiquated modes of life, a view that ignores the social and class contradictions inherent in the peasantry and the new features of village life.
Either of these extremes contradicts not only Lenin's attitude to the peasantry, but also the tradition of the Russian and Soviet literature, which has always combined love for the people and the peasantry with a sober and truthful portrayal of its life and characters.
In this connection let us look at another modern novella about rural life which is in some ways akin to Belov's ``All in a Day's Work. = __ERROR__ Missing closing double-quote in original. It is Valentin Rasputin's The Last Break, telling the story of the life and death of an old peasant woman Anna, and of her children who gather to see their eighty-year-old mother off on her last trip.
The old woman bore many children and she enjoyed it. But at the time of the story she has only five children left, three daughters and two sons. The old woman was living out her last years with the younger son Mikhail who alone stayed in the village.
114She was not afraid of dying. ``She had spent herself totally, boiled out to the last drop. And what, looking back, have been the rewards of life? It has been the same all her life: kids pestering, the cattle mooing, the garden to be tended, not to speak of work in the field, in the woods and on the collective farm, the daily grind amidst which she had no time to pause and look around, to register the beauty of the Earth and skies in her eyes and soul.''
The story is unambitious and the plot Far from new, and the material is undramatic. But why then does it leave such a light, uplifting feeling?
Rasputin belongs to the mainstream of the democratic tradition of the Russian and Soviet prose which has so vividly manifested itself in recent years. However, the writer builds on that tradition and does not merely rehearse what has been done before. He seeks new approaches. The simple story told by the talented writer assumes symbolic and tragic significance and in this situation the souls of the characters are starkly revealed.
Mother is on her deathbed and, on a cable from her son Mikhail with whom she lives in the village, the old woman's children come from all over this vast country. Old Anna faces death with a clear conscience and without rancour. Her death, however, turns out to be a test not only for herself but also for her children. For them the mother's death is a tragic thine because she is leaving life having given them all she could. As far as the author is concerned, owever, the real tragedy is that her children-Lyusia, Varvara, Ilya and Mikhail-have not withstood the test of their humanity. The modest story is a severe indictment of these people.
Having come home to see their mother off on ner journey to eternity, the children inadvertently give her another break. So great is her joy at seeing dear children, who live so far away, gathered at her bedside that she simply cannot afford to die immediately. She is ashamed of this and at the same time quietly delights in her last stroke of luck. She is ashamed of keeping her children at her side and diverting them from other, more important affairs, as if there could be affairs more important.
Rasputin brings gentle humour, kindness, humanity and psychological flair to describing the last days of the old woman who finds herself in a situation that can only be described as tragicomic. Equally as natural and artistically 115 vigorous is the second strand of the narrative which describes the feelings and behaviour of the old woman's children who have reunited after a long period in order to fulfil their last duty to their mother, in keeping with the age-old tradition. Rasputin is kind and truthful. He shows without a single false note the grief of the children for which they had already prepared themselves and their sudden joy, and perplexity at the unexpected turn of events which they are carefully hiding from one another. The reader becomes aware of a sneaking feeling of anxiety which grows on him as the story makes its smooth and calm way to the ending. More and more apparently casual touches prepare us for what turns out to be a not unexpected finale in which all the ``i''s are dotted. The story piles up evidence of the meanness, lack of human dignity and smallness of soul that can be summed up in the word vanity. Vanity leads not just to triviality but to a moral crime because the children by being engrossed in their petty pursuits poison the last days and hours of the dying mother.
It is not merely a matter of the drunken merriment and the brawls that break out at the old woman's deathbed, and the petty jealousies that neither Varvara, nor Mikhail nor Lyusia are able to contain. The most hideous thing is the falsehood and pretence in their parting words as they say goodbye to their mother, knowing that they would not see her again: ``Don't be offended. We must go.'' What makes them go is not the law of humanity but the law of vanity. They have to go because they arc spiritually callous people bereft of kindness.
``Get well, mother. And forget about death.''
The old woman died that very night.
Thus the moral judgement is pronounced. The question being raised is of no small importance, for it has to do with the menace of lack of spirituality that dehumanises people. This is what makes Rasputin's story valuable.
In one of the most vivid episodes, Lyusia goes to the woods on the day following her arrival at the village. That walk in the familiar but forgotten countryside is to her a journey into the past full of poignant and sweet memories. That walk is described with uncanny perceptiveness and the pages are more haunting than any other in the book. Looking at Lyusia's troubled soul through the magnifying lens of art, the writer deliberately hyperbolises the feelings of 116 Lyusia for whom the journey into the past is at once delight, torment and retribution. ``I must run, run, she kept saying to herself. Why, oh, why did she go out into the woodsr Who drove her out? What did she forget here? Forget?! Her mind fixed on that word, which moved into focus. She has forgotten. Now at last it was out, the thing that kept nagging her and appeared to her as a long-time muted feeling of guilt for which she would have to answer. And indeed in her new city life Lyusia has forgotten everything, the spring Sundays when they prepared firewood, the fields where she worked, Igrenka, the incident at the bird-cherry tree and many, many other things that used to happen. Sne has clean forgotten all that.''
These reflections provide the key to the message of the story. They can hardly be questioned if one takes the thought of the Motherland-the link with the land where you were born and reared-as the spiritual source of the individual.
But they are open to question if viewed in a more general and absolute context.
The reader may get the impression that the author believes the children are spiritually bereft by contrast with the mother because they have severed their links with the soil which has moulded and fostered the soul of old Anna. In other words, from the peasant soil.
But the notion of ``soil'' is not confined to the village, and farm labour is a basis for morality to the same extent as any other work, whether rural or urban, industrial or purely intellectual. Lyusia's soul is impoverished not because she went to live in the city and has ``clean forgotten" the village, but because of the way she lives in the city and in the village. In fact the cause and effect should be reversed. It is more likely that Lyusia has forgotten about her childhood because she has grown up with an empty soul.
Misinterpretations of aspects of the reality being portrayed may lead to some misplaced accents in the narrative. In the case in hand the victim is Tanchora, the mother's darling, who grew up to be a remarkably kind and generous person. And she, of all people, has not come from her remote Kiev and has inflicted the gravest wound on her dying mother. The writer is not interested to know what prevented Tanchora (being the way she is) from coming to her native village to bury her mother. He just states the bare fact that she has not come. This approach fits in with 117 the overall concept and structure of the story, but we learn enough of that ``behind-the-scenes" character to feel that it is at odds with the concept. We do not believe that Tanchora is indifferent and cold, and, along with the mother, we do not believe that she had been unable to come.; And, oddly enough, and contrary to the author's intentions, the little that is said about her in the story suggests that she is a kindred spirit of the old woman Anna and has inherited her pure soul.
Another novella of Rasputin, entitled Live and Remember, which earned the author a State Prize, places peasant characters (for which he has a marked preference) in an extreme situation brought about by the war. While The Last Break is a dramatic story of an old peasant woman, Live and Remember tells the tragic tale of a young peasant woman by the name of Nastena.
The recent years have seen a gallery of heroic Russian female characters created by writers. These strong and original characters discovered by modern prose usually reveal themselves in the grim circumstances of the war, and in the hard pre-war and post-war years.
Nastena, the heroine of Live and Remember, can be ranged with Katerina in Belov's ``All in a Day's Work'', Vasilisa Melentievna, Pelageya and Lizka Pryaslina in Fyodor Abramov's novels and stories, Fenya in Mikhail Alexeyev's novel The Willow That Does Not Weep, and old Anna in Rasputin's The Last Break. Nastena is caught up in a particularly unusual and tragic situation.
Nastena fails to find a valid way out of the situation, because taking her life, a human life, is not a solution. Nastena's suicide is an indictment of her deserter husband Andrei Guskov whom she loves and who has betrayed her and himself. Perhaps it is also an indictment of her own feminine weakness and her love for an unworthy person.
Rasputin creates a startlingly complex and attractive female character. It embodies the all-pervading elemental power of goodness and love that has lent unfathomable strength to grassroots characters, over the centuries. All her life Nastena dreamed of being the giver of love and care rather than the taker..., it was for this that women were endowed with that magic power which, amazingly, became the gentler and the richer the more often it was used''. With profound insight into feminine psychology, Rasputin tells the story 118 of Nastena's love for her traitor husband, a love full of insoluble contradictions, and her conflicting emotions of pity and disgust, tenderness and revulsion, and finally, the allembracing kindness that borders on all-forgiveness.
Nastena knows that a deserter cannot be forgiven, which gives her a strange sense of guilt for what her husband has done. ``Guilty of a crime she did not commit.'' Perhaps, then, she loved him too much and for her own sake, waited and called him too eagerly. ``You are guilty, and I'm guilty with you. We'll hold answer together. Maybe it wouldn t have happened if it hadn't been for me. So don't you try to shoulder all the blame alone... It means that I failed you. Maybe you didn't trust me that's why you couldn't stay away, or maybe you didn't think I cared enough, or something. Don't take my guilt upon yourself, it's mine, I know, she impresses upon Andrei who is unable to understand the degree of her martyrdom, self-sacrifice and love, which to her are not self-sacrifice but a natural impulse. Rasputin vividly portrays the selfless love of a Russian woman, wno is capable, like Dostoyevsky's women, of sharing the blame with those they love no matter how great the blame and how dreadful the punishment.
The feeling of guilt grows on Nastena and reaches a tragic peak when she is no longer able to conceal her pregnancy, the result of her secret love, and this guilt aggravates the inherent drama of the situation in which she finds herself. The contradiction between the lofty and noble feeling of love and an extreme situation that rules it out, is Nastena's disaster and source of guilt.
Live and Remember is perhaps less a story of love than of the Great Patriotic War and its impact on the life of the nation and every individual. The best pages in the book are those which tell about the heroic behaviour of Siberian villagers during the war of 1941--1945, of how women and children, all men having gone to the front, worked in the fields and felled timber, how news of the death of soldiers came, and how the few crippled survivors returned to the village; and of how news of the war's end reached the village and the poor and hungry peasants celebrated the long-awaited Victory Day. The stern and authentic picture of life that emerges from these pages makes the reader, and Nastena, see her love and her tragedy in a new light.
However, the readers, Nastena and, it appears, the author 119 himself, find it difficult to come to terms with that stern truth. For initially it seems that love, the loftiest of human feelings, is always right, and hence, the author believes, Nastena's dream of happiness is right. Reading the story, one is aware of the complex inner contradictions the author had to overcome and of his arduous progress to a morally valid solution of the problem he has set before himself and the reader. The actual text of the story bears traces of these contradictions and the tortuous path to the truth. These contradictions can be discerned in some long-- drawnout passages, faltering intonation, exaggerations, over-emphasis in some accents and muting of others. And yet it may well be that the open-endedness that invites the reader to reflection is one of the attractions of the story because, while there are some loose ends in the thinking, the author divines a great deal thanks to the astonishing perceptiveness of his talent. And that enables the reader to fill in the gaps.
Along with Nastena, and the author, we gradually become convinced that some historical epochs demand that social duty should be given precedence over any personal feeling. Nastena soon realises that she has overstepped the line and has found herself isolated, in her native village, an alien, .a stranger who dares not to respond to their tears and joys and to take part in their conversations and songs. She felt she lived a ``stolen life'', and even on Victory Day, ``that feast of human joy and pain'', she felt shy of people. ``Shame... Why does she feel such excruciating shame before people and herself? How had all this guilt built up in her? What can she do about it?''
The infinite, unfathomable love and guilt of the woman who is ready to do anything, even bear a child in such terrible circumstances, are an indictment of the animal egoism and callousness of the deserter Guskov. He needs the child, not for love of her or the child, but for the sake of selfjustification. He has not deserted in vain if he has offspring!
The author's attitude to the deserter Guskov is unambiguous, and indeed it would have been strange if it had not been what it is. At times it seems that the author presses his point too much, which by no means contributes to the artistic coherence of the story. Nastena's death- and her whole life are an indictment of Guskov. And not only that. The anguish of his old father who is bewildered and 120 disgusted with his son's behaviour, the village life during the war, the unremitting toil, hunger, news of the war dead and the armless peasants returning from the front, and the whole moral atmosphere of nationwide heroism and selfdenial, of a war of national liberation so typical of those years and so vividly evoked in the story-all these are a stern indictment of Guskov. The author, too, condemns him. Think of the symbolic episode in which the deserter, hiding in a forest lodge, forelorn and bitter, tries to imitate the howling of wolves to cheat his loneliness, and the imitation is uncannily apt.
The question the reader inevitably comes to ask himself, although the author does not explicitly ask it, is this: why has Guskov become a deserter? In the same way, we cannot help asking ourselves when reading Vasil Bykov's Sotnikov, why did Rybak betray his country and Sotnikov, sick, physically frail and emaciated, has not?
As will be seen from both stories, the sources of Rybak's treachery and Guskov's desertion are the same. Neither had it in mind to become a traitor or a deserter when they went to the front. In fact, both were good workers at their farms and good soldiers. They fought oravely and stood up to the test of the bullet, the danger and hardship of the frontline. But at some point both embarked on a downward path which led one to the nazi police and the other to the wolves in the Siberian taiga. Why? What are the sources of their criminal weakness?
The answer is that neither of them had a developed civic and patriotic consciousness. We see, for example, that unlike the other people for whom the front and the Great Patriotic War of 1941--1945 were a great moral and spiritual upheaval that awakened lofty thoughts and feelings, with Guskov the war provoked merely a desire to survive at any cost. Andrei Guskov is an extreme manifestation of what might be called the ``biological'' man, that is, a person totally without social awareness. His fear and animal egoism alienate him from the patriotic uplift experienced by the people during the war.
Perhaps the main philosophical message of Live and Remember is to show how morally bereft and impoverished, and sometimes dangerous, is a person who has been placed or has placed himself outside society and has confined his life and interests to the pursuit of biological needs. This 121 is the impression one forms of Andrei Guskqv, that ``child of nature , from a few glimpses we get of him before the war. His moral development was adequate so long as he was among others and was guided by the ``herd instinct'', but he was found wanting when faced with a moral choice. He started by making little concessions to himself and before he knew it slid further and further down until he became a deserter, a criminal. From a ``biological'' and only `` biological" man, i.e., a man remote from social interests, he became a spiritually empty anti-social man.
It is the philosophical and social implications of the story which link the destinies of such different characters as the deserter Andrei Guskov and his wife Nastena, who dies so tragically, that lends the story artistic coherence. The authors talent and unerring moral sense, for all the complexity of the task facing hun> eventually enabled him to create a work of high artistic value.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2While opposing idealisation of outdated tradition, one should not underestimate the importance of literature's study of the people's character and morality. In this one needs a clear frame of reference and a full understanding of the fact that the morality of the working people is by no means confined to rustic or acquisitive mentality and that it is based on ``the simple norms of morality and justice which Were perverted or crudely violated under the rule of the exploiters" and which, as the Programme of the CPSU says, are regarded by communism ``as inviolable rules of life in the relations between individuals as well as the relations between nations''. Our attitude to the values of the people's spirit and the morality of the working people is determined by the fact that ``communist morality includes the main universal human moral norms that have been worked out by the masses of the people over millennia in the struggle against social oppression and moral vices".
Such recent works as Fyodor Abramov's trilogy The Pryaslins and Victor Astafiev's The Last Bow and Kingfish give us a close-up view of the character of the people moulded by work and contact with the earth, a character with which the writers can identify themselves having risen from the p,eople themselves.
122Fyodor Abramov, in his introduction to The Pryaslins, says these remarkable words: ``How many times as an adolescent I sat at this table scalding my lips with simple peasant broth after a hard day's work. My father used to sit at it and my mother, who did not survive the bereavement of the last war, used to rest here.'' The table stands in an old hut on the remote Sinelga where Mikhail Pryaslin (Two Winters and Three Summers, the second book of the trilogy) brought his small brothers and sisters for their first grassmowing season.
In the introduction, the author himself, and not a fictitious character, looks at all sorts of crosses, triangles, squares and circles, the family signs the Pekashino peasants cut on the wooden table-top. Then literacy came, he notes, and the signs were replaced by letters and more and more frequently there appears the star. ``It is a veritable chronicle of Pekashino! A northern peasant seldom knows his family tree beyond the grandfather. Perhaps this table is the fullest available document about the people who lived on the land of Pekashino.'' The author goes on, ``As I read and read this book on wood the faces of my distant fellow countrymen gradually came to life in my mind's eye.''
If one is to understand Fyodor Abramov and many other modern Soviet prose writers, one must bear in mind their deeply felt link with peasant life about which they write, their personal link with the nation's folk culture, links that are of course, not only direct, but also indirect, coming through the medium of the -tradition and the spirit of Russian literature.
As vividly manifested by Abramov's novels about Pekashino, his prose is heroic prose about the Soviet peasantry during the tragic war years. For the two winters and three summers after the Victory-which are described in the second novel-are also the price the Soviet people had to pay for the devastation and hardship of the war. Those were the years when Pekashino was still short of bread and seeds, when cattle died for lack of fodder and when ``women still grew numb with terror at the sight of the postwoman Ulya: the war was over but the death notifications kept coming.'' The secret of the impact of Abramov's novels on the readers lies in the stark truth of his narrative which does not gloss over the dramatic trials that befell the Soviet people at the front and at home, particularly in the remote northern villages.
123The strong point of Abramov's talent is description, his writing containing a wealth of detail, for he knows and enjoys recreating the colourful life of the nothern Russian village.
Without building an intricate plot, the writer seems to be writing a straightforward record of the life of the small village of Pekashino, a collective farm in the northern province of Arkhangelsk. However, the writer's genuine talent makes that chronicle into a moving artistic testimony of the time. It is an apotheosis of the people's life and the selflessness of the Russian peasantry during the war. The war period, writes the author, has revealed something immense and important in the people, without which it is impossible to understand either the Russian man or the past and future of the Russian land.'' The writer looks attentively at his heroes, Mikhail Pryaslin, his sister Lizka, their mother Anna and the collective farm manager Anfisa Petrovna who in some important way is akin to the epic monumental character of the old Russian peasant woman Vasilisa Melentievna which the writer discovered in his story ``Wooden Horses''. It is the same type of a Russian woman who ``would stop a galloping horse, and enter a burning hut" (Nikolai Nekrasov). The woman's lot, the woman's heart and the grit of the Russian working woman during the war form one of the main themes in Abramov's writing.
Abramov's prose is profoundly national in terms of characters, attitude and language. The assertion of the value of the national character comes to him without affectation, as naturally as breathing.
Investigating the moral and spiritual potential of the people which so powerfully manifested itself during the war, Fyodor Abramov concludes: ``People were moved by some great force of awesome scope. That force made decrepit old men and women rise from their beds, and made women sweat and strain in the field from dawn to dusk. That force made men of teenagers, muted the hungry wailing of the child, and that same force brought Anfisa to join the Party.''
The Russian national character portrayed by Abramov is a Soviet character. This is a fundamental point for Abramov. Sensitive to the truth of the wartime years, the author shows how much the Party meant to the people. Joining the Party or .the Young Communist League are red-letter days 124 for Anfisa Petrovna and for Mikhail Pryaslin in Two Winters and Three Summers. These events are described in the book with moving authenticity. And the author draws equally authentic, humane portraits of the Party workers during the war, ``the regional men" who shared with the common people all the wartime hardships and in addition assumed the burden of responsibility. Responsibility for supplying the army and for contributing to the war effort in the name of which they kept in check their emotions of pity... Whether you take the regional Party secretary Novozhilov, the regional Party committee official Lukashin who later becomes manager of the Pekashino collective farm or the special Party representative Gavrila Ganichev, or the blacksmith Ilya Netyosov, ``a selfless Party member and enthusiast'', all of them preach the same faith and have the same moral principle: ``A Communist is he who can say honestly, 'I have died as many deaths as you have and even more, my belly has suffered from hunger as often as yours; you have gone barefoot and in rags, and so have I. I have shared all your grief and suffering with you, in everything and always!''
Such people as Lukashin, Anfisa Petrovna and Ilya Netyosov are models of morality for Mikhail Pryaslin, who at fourteen stepped into his father's shoes as the head of a large family and a farm worker. Anfisa Petrovna, the farm manager, tells the women farmers, ``Yes, Mikhail. Throughout the war he was no worse than a full-grown man, a man like the best of them!" The appealing, morally robust character of Mikhail Pryaslin is without any doubt a major achievement of the novel. It is a typical character of the time drawn vividly and truthfully. It is a character of the people and at the same time a Soviet character who combines the best elements of the people's ethos and has been moulded by the experience of collective farming. This can be seen from Mikhail Pryaslin's active social involvement, his sense of being the master of his land, and to no lesser extent, these are the qualities one finds in the heart and conscience of his sister Lizka, another character for which Abramov claims credit.
The protagonists of Abramov's novels are not just peasants, they are collective farmers, and this is how thev think of themselves. His novels are an artist's study of the new social phenomenon of the collective farm. The writer, who has the priceless gift of insight into the life of the common 125 people and its development, could not afford to pass over the new forms of the people's life and organisation, which enabled peasants to withstand the test of the war.
Fyodor Abramov's prose, for all its outward tranquillity, is a committed, sensitive prose, pregnant with conflict. It so happened that his novels, the first of which was written as far oack as 1958, brought their weight to bear in the polemics going on today among writers and critics. Their social spirit challenges the idealised view of Russian antiquity with its one-sided sentimental romantic attachment to old peasant Russia. While he has profound respect and love for peasant life, its remote (Wooden Horses) and recent ( Brothers and Sisters, Two Winters and Three Summers) past when the soul and conscience of the people revealed themselves in war, he is aware of the historical limitations of the old psychology and the acquisitive elements it carries. The contradictory nature of the former peasant (worker versus proprietor) is vividly shown in the second novel of the trilogy and is highlighted by the opposition of Mikhail and Egorsha who ``playfully ambles through life like a stallion''. The character of Egorsha, however, cannot be explained as a leftover of the past. His egoism takes perfectly modern forms. Some other characters in the trilogy also display social egoism and greed in a thoroughly modern way.
The mentality of petty proprietors is notoriously tenacious and adaptable, and it crops up in both town and countryside in most unexpected guises, but, as the novels of Abramov argue potently, in whatever guise, that mentality is still a social evil and our main enemy, a cause of many dramas and tragedies. This theme, which is one of many in his novels, is the main preoccupation of his recent novellas Pelageya and Alka. In them the writer probes into the drama of a peasant soul caught and struggling in the vice of a contradiction between the lofty and the base, truth and delusion.
Critics were tardy in according due recognition to Pelageya, which I think is the best of what Abramov has written to date. They may have been deterred by what seemed a s6mewhat vague, ambivalent attitude of the author to the novel character. In fact the impression has nothing to do with vagueness or uncertainty or bearings. It has everything to do with the complexity of the character and circumstances that defy simple assessments.
126The drama of the woman baker Pelageya goes back to the last days of the war when ``people waited for Victory as for a miracle. Everything would change overnight... But how could it change overnight if the country lay in ruins?" It was impossible to feed and clothe everyone after such a terrible war.
On the other hand, something relentlessly began to change as soon as the war ended. This is vividly snown in the novel Two Winters and Three Summers. ``Formerly, even some six months ago, everything was simple,'' reflects Anfisa Petrovna in that novel. ``The war made tne village like one clenched fist. Now the fist is loosening. Every finger cries, 'I want to live!' And it insists on living in its own way, on its own.''
That was the time when Pelageya, too, was starting to live ``on her own" (Pelageya). When we first meet her in the story she is summing up the results of her life. The results are sad. In her old age, Pelageya is alone, having buried her husband, whose life she had made miserable, and lost her daughter who has eloped to town with an army lieutenant. She is alone with the riches which she had spent all her life acquiring. ``My God! And this is what I spent my life on!" comes the cry of her heart. Her life contained a lot of things: unremitting, crippling dawn-to-dusk labour, marital infidelity-coldly calculated pay for the place of a baker-hunger and cold, and peasant cunning and astuteness that sometimes led her to abuses, as when she used bread to curry favour with people she needed, and few could resist the ``light, rich-flavoured, nourishing loaves''. How much physical and nervous strain all that involved, and how many concessions to her conscience! And all for the sake of chintz and crepe, all for the sake of what is now called glad rags.
``But who is to blame for the fact that all these rags had edged her husband and everything else out of her life?" Pelageya asks herself this anguished question trying to explain tier life. One cannot easily dismiss the explanation. Pelageya recalls the hunger during and just after the war and the crop failures. She and her family went hungry for a third of their lives. The only thing for which bread could be bartered was fabrics. People's clothes were terribly worn out after the war. When she managed to get the job of a baker, Pelageya compromised her conscience in order to save 127 herself and her family. In fact, no compromise was involved, she merely gave free rein to the other side of her peasant nature. She easily overstepped the limit and ``began to grab garments with her both nands''. ``I kept at it for many years,'' she confesses in the story, ``and I couldn't stop. Because I thought to myself: it is not the chintz and silks with which I'm filling up my trunks, it's life, security.'' A happy life for her daughter, husband and for herself. And now, as a punishment, it turns out that neither her husband, nor her daughter, not even herself need these trunks.
The character of Pelageya in Abramov's novella is full of drama. The drama comes to a climax in the present day, when things have improved in the village, and it reveals the main harm of the acquisitive instinct to which Pelageya yielded at a difficult moment. It robs life of spiritual content, of all meaning.
However, the acquisitive instinct with all that it entails is only part of Pelageya's complex character, a complexity one cannot afford to dismiss, when all is said and done, the results of Pelageya's life are not reduced to rags and trunks. It was really her work that made her tick, and the story describes that poetically and affectionatefy, with the deep bow to the hard-working woman of the collective farm that is the hallmark of Fyodor Abramov's writing. Although in her two decades as a baker she hardly took a day offand during these years the stove in the bakery had to be remade many times, as the bricks kept cracking from the heat-it was here, in this gruelling work for the good of the people that she found the meaning of her existence.
In general, writes the author, she never missed anything quite so much as the bakery. Not even her daughter Alka. Before she died, Pelageya went to say goodbye to ner bakery. She was ``clean and pious, having taken a steambath in the morning as if readying herself for a pilgrimage".
Not everyone can be ennobled by work and derive joy from what we call creative work. Alka, who comes home for a while after mother's death, has difficulty in grasping that simple truth. ``Is baking a good loaf of bread the greatest of human joys? And as far as Alka remembered, mother had no other delight. She only grew kind and smiled (although she could hardly keep on ner feet for fatigue) when bread came out well.''
Of course Pelageya should rather be pitied than blamed 128 for having lost her integrity. Alka is another matter, and her drama contains a question addressed by the writer to the readers.
In the novella Alka Abramov does not seem to be giving of his best, and it is not quite on a par with Pelageya and Two Winters and Three Summers. There are signs that it has been written in haste. But it does have a message, and a very relevant one at that. Sensitive to the life of the grassroots, the writer could not help noticing the new features that the past decade has brought. Both in Pelaeeya (which takes place in the mid-60s) and especially in Alka (the most recent years) we see present-day village, a wellto-do village in which the question of daily bread has long been solved. Comfortable life, which was only dreamt about during the war, is a reality. ``When the war is over, we'll live well. We'll build new nouses, every household will have a cow, sheep and bread-bread will be had for the taking.'' But Alka does not need the cow, the sheep, and, for that matter, the mother's house. She wants it to be sold. What does she need, then? What does she need to be happy, to be at peace with the world and her conscience? Glad rags, easy money and entertainment? Isn't something important missing?
And why, having inherited the acquisitiveness and egoism of her mother, albeit of a modern kind, for which she was disliked in the village, she failed to inherit her capacity to enjoy her work? Perhaps this is why she has a rit of hysteria and tears (``auntie, tell me, why do people dislike me?''), and this is why she feels guilt before her mother and decides to stay on the farm in deferenc'e to her memory.
The answer to the question put in the story is provided by the whole body of the writer's work. What, or rather, who is it that wounds Alka most, stirs her soul and makes her unhappy? Odd though it may seem, it is the example of her mother and shame for her behaviour which she knows mother would have disapproved of. And it is also her closest friend Lidka and her Jiusband Mitya who once was Alka's suitor. Not because ``Lidka has got herself some lovely clothes'', of which she made a mental note when she visited her at home, but because Mitya, who reminds us of Mikhail Pryaslin, and the humane and pure atmosphere of his family shake her and make her heart ache.
Alka feels forlorn because she is alienated from the large 129 genuine life of the Working people. But .all is not lost for Alka, the author suggests. Alka's escapades are largely a reaction to the asceticism of her parents, especially the mother who confined her life to work in order to save up for a rainy day. Alka has no use for such life. And anyway, she does not have to live in that way. Times have changed. She has yet to learn, however, how to live in a way that would not make her feel ashamed before her mother and other people. But we see-for example, when she mows grass-that Pelageya's blood runs in her veins. And we believe that sooner or later she would find her proper place, in town or in the country.
His study of the people's life has brought Fyodor Abramov closer and closer to the present time and we may well expect that this important writer would concentrate more on the present and offer us ever deeper insights into the complex problems and issues of the life of the people today. For he has always felt ``a keen link" with life. His work, like the books of Sholokhov, Tvardovsky, Aitmatov, Melezh, Astafiev, Yashin and many other Soviet writers call us (to paraphrase the writer's words in Wooden Horses), not to the quiet backwater of outdated illusions but to ``the large and bustling world'', inviting us to ``work, to do good for people''. To do it in the way it is being done and will be done until her last hour by the heroine of Wooden Horses Vasilisa Melentievna, ``that old peasant woman from the wild northern forests, unknown but great in her deeds".
Fyodor Abramov's chronicle of life on the collective farm, which is, in the final analysis, the life of the people, has clear indications of time and space. He investigates the life of a northern village in the Arkhangelsk area, and he does so in concrete historical terms and with due attention to the specific problems that faced the village at each successive stage of its nistory.
He is writing a saga of f& northern village in which he was born and reared, to which he returned after being wounded at the front and where he lived and worked for a long time, in short, the place with which his whole destiny is associated. He writes about the village of Pekashino with deep involvement and filial love. If only for that reason, the work of the talented writer merits attention and respect and arouses wide public interest.
The third book of trilogy, entitled Roads and Crossroads, 130 is a link in an ambitiously conceived plan that reflects the movement and change of the people's hfe. The book cannot be properly judged in isolation from the preceding dilogy, Brothers and Sisters and Two Winters and Three Summers. The new novel is also set in Pekashino during and after the war, and is devoted mostly to its women and children. We meet the same characters-Mikhail and Lizka Pryaslin, Stepan Andreyanovich, Anfisa Minina, Ilya Netyosov and Pyotr Zhitov, all genuinely Russian and Soviet characters who have withstood the supreme test of the war and have upheld our socialist values without going back on their principles and conscience.
The physical and spiritual strain and the hardship of the characters of Abramov s novels are almost beyond endurance. He would have belittled his heroes if he had glossed over the true extent of the people's hardship during the war and early post-war years. He would not have given justice to the heroism of the people during the Great Patriotic War.
The action in the third book of the series, Roads and Crossroads, takes place five or six years after the devastating war. Not surprisingly, life in Pekashino is still hard. The price of Victory had been great! And although the manager of the Pekashino collective farm, Lukashin, believes that ``Pekashino will be well-fed, it cannot be otherwise'', the problem of daily bread is still facing the farmers of Pekashino.
Peacetime is making itself felt all the same, and the people of Pekashino naturally want a normal life, and no one would call normal the existence under the burden of war when they had to give everything for the sake of the front. Why is change for the better slow in coming? Can the war and its aftermath account for the economic woes and hardship that still plague Pekashino? This is the question the heroes of the novel cannot help asking themselves. And it is especially true of the Communists Lukashin, Podrezov, Antisa Minina, Pyotr Zhitov and others. To them the question is painful but unavoidable.
Roads and Crossroads depicts the difficult time in the history of his native Pekasnino when everyone was confronted with this question. It has to do with the policy of collective-farm development, the need to improve rural economic management and husbandry of the land s resources. 131 This, then, is the thrust of the new novel by Abramovnot only to praise the heroic efforts of the peasants in the early 1950s but also to show how that period, with all its contradictions, slowly and gradually produced among the grassroots a constructive awareness or the need for change.
While the problems raised are acute and the truth about the hard times in the life of Pekashino is starkly told, the general mood of Roads and Crossroads is genuinely optimistic. The novel drives its optimism from the fact that the life it depicts so truthfully is open to historical progress, to the future, and is poised for change. And this life is directed by committed people of strong moral fibre, genuine Communists and convinced champions of the cause of the Party and the people.
A fresh departure in the new novel is the character of Podrezov, a Party leader of the austere war and post-war years. The First Secretary of the Pinega Regional Party Committee is a character of considerable stature. He is torn by contradictions. The author and the reader regard him with mixed feelings. Fyodor Abramov has deep affection for Podrezov although he judges him quite severely. Roads and Crossroads is a nostalgic tribute to Podrezov. New times have called for new people and more modern methods of leadership which Podrezov is unable to learn. And yet the writer (and, naturally, the reader) has deep respect for that powerful character, a man of dedication, moral purity and strong Communist convictions. This is a valid assessment of Podrezov.
It is Podrezov's misfortune rather than fault that he cannot keep abreast of the times. A lathe-worker at eight, he became chairman of the village Soviet at seventeen. During the war, the secretary of the Pinega Regional Party Committee knew by name not only every person but every horse in his region. He was the spearhead of the valiant effort of the Communists of Pinega during the war. A tough and overbearing man, he nevertheless liked people ``to argue with him, to object and prove their point of view''. His own best arguments were his deeds. He was expert at everything: ploughing, sowing, mowing, threshing, wood-- cutting, wielding a boat hook, building houses, bearhunting and casting nets. And one must hand it to him, it brought people round. It was more effective than any ``pep-talk''.
132This is a true portrait of the Communist who headed northern regions and who had joined the Party at the turn of the 1920s.
What, then, is the inner drama of Secretary Podrezov? What is the nature of his conflict with Zarudny, a young engineer at the head of the Sotyuga timbering complex with which the whole future of Pinega is linked? Zarudny accuses Podrezov of failing to see that ``the timbering industry has entered a new epoch, the epoch of technological revolution'', which means that a regional economic manager should ``exchange his horse for a tractor and a car''. When Zarudny speaks ``in his young ringing voice" about ``the leadership lagging behind the times and about the need for a new, bolder and broader view of life'', Podrezov has no arguments to counter that.
His confrontation with Zarudny, like his own doubts and thoughts about ``the establishment of the right relations with the village" are in the final analysis indicative of the same thing, and are harbingers of the changes that were brewing in life and that brought to Pinega, not only comfortable living and wealth but also a new type of work, new modes of life, new methods of economic management and new relations among people.
Fyodor Abramov in his new novel records the very beginning of that dramatic and prolonged historical process, and he does so in a stark and vivid manner.
The novel concludes with Ilya Netyosov predicting confidently that ``now life will change for the better''. This is the sentiment shared by Mikhail Pryaslin, to whom the author's attention returns time and again.
``In his mind's eye he saw the whole native country. Vast and covered with green forests.
``It was he who in these hard years, together with the women of Pekashino, helped raise it from ruins, rebuild and feed the cities. And a new and proud feeling of master of his land surged up in him.''
These crowning lines of the novel are not a declaration, but a natural conclusion of the story of another stage in the life and struggles of Pekashino. They are at the same time a bridge to the next, concluding part of his epic. That book hopefully would introduce us to the beautiful and furious world of endeavours, cares and transformations of Pekashino as it grows into a modern collective farm.
133The writing of Victor Astafiev also has its roots in the thick of the people's life.
In his essay, ``Concerned About All Things Living'', Astafiev rightly points out the dangers in store for a writer who chooses to rely .solely on his background, no matter how rich and varied it may be. He is against pampering of writers who moved into writing from working-class or peasant background. ``I, too, entered literature from a working class background,'' says the writer. ``But I had enough good sense not to swallow a fake bait. And yet, encouraged by the patting on the back, I might well have tried to stamp my heavy boots in the literary corridors beating my breast with my fist, 'Let me in, I'm a worker!'"
Astafiev finds irritating constant ``sympathy expressed in article after article for the hardship" he himself experienced in his own life, which has indeed been anything but easy. Astafiev believes that in taking such a view of his writing career critics seek, consciously or unconsciously, to urge the ``reader to be as lenient to me as possible and to share with the critics a kind of surprise and admiration encountered in the Russian hinterlands: ``Just look! The boy used to .have rickets, and now he can walk!'"
How does one account for the writer's rather unexpected anger with the critics? Apparently Astafiev is convinced that literature is too important a matter for any allowances to be made for anyone. Astafiev tells about ``gifted people" who petered out as writers only because they were ``more concerned with projecting their literary image as 'workers' forgetting that the most important thing was self-improvement''. Astafiev Delieves ``irresponsible critics" are too facile in lavishing praise on the grounds that ``look, he is a worker and yet he can write".
``For an umpteenth time one has to repeat after the more exacting writers of our time the simple truth that no dabbling, no amateurism should be allowed in Russian literature, we have no right to allow that.'' Why? Because ``behind us stands such brilliant literature and tower such titans that each of us, before claiming the reader's attention from them for a day or an hour, should think hard what grounds he has for doing so.''
Victor Astafiev's own life and literary career entitle him to issuing such a stern warning.
We learn from his autobiographical essay ``Concerned 134 About All Things Living" that Astafiev wrote his first story, ``A Public-Minded Person'', while on night guard duty at a sausage factory where he worked as a freight handler and nignt watchman. By that time he had behind him a hungry childhood in Siberia, an orphanage at Igarka, a vocational school, the front, wounds, hard manual jobs and six years of secondary school. One cannot help thinking of the youth described in Gorky's My Universities.
Later, when he became an established writer, replying to a reader's question, ``How do you conceive of the plots of your books, by chance or by looking for them in life?" Astafiev would say, ``Plots are not mushrooms. As far as I am concerned it is useless to look for them. Most often, the plot finds me, so to speak. My plots usually come from memories, that is, from the times when I was not a writer and did not expect to be one, and so 'looking for plots' was out of the question for me.''
In the meantime it was ``to learn in order not to remain a literary semi-savage, to learn to read, think and work professionally-this was the challenge I had to meet, or else, being a semi-literate person, I was doomed as a manyofletters''. This was the task about which the budding writer went with particular determination after his unsuccessful literary debut with Until Next Spring (1953), a collection of stories, and Snows Thaw (1958), a novel.
``The writer's work is constant search, complex, exhausting, often driving you to despair.'' This, then, was the enthusiastic eager feeling with which Astafiev and other writers of kindred spirit entered big-time literature; a feeling of responsibility before literature and the reader marks the best of his work.
For him, literature is a constant search of the truth, above all, moral truth and humanity. In this search the writer draws on his own vast experience, on the powerful tradition of the Russian and Soviet literature and the work of his own intelligence and soul enriched with modern human knowledge.
His books are distinguished by literary skill rich and precise use of the vernacular and, most notably, by deep moral and philosophical culture, a nobleness of thought and emotion.
When you read Astafiev's books-the novellas The Pass and Old Oak, Shooting Stars. Thcjt. 'I'hi Last Boic. The 135 Shepherd and the Shepherdess, Kingfish and the collections of his stories-you can readily observe the growth of his original talent which has developed by leaps.
Critics agree among themselves that Victor Astafiev did not become a real writer until he published his story The Pass (1959). The critic Makarov wrote prophetically that The Pass opens a series of novellas for which a fitting general heading would be something like ``Stories Told by My Contemporary''. It is a measure of Astafiev's respect for critics that he entitled his recent collection (including Old Oak, Theft, The Last Bow and The Shepherd and the Shepherdess), Stories About My Contemporary.
As he progressed from the relatively naive The Pass, and the somewhat controversial Old Oak to a tragic story Theft, to the lyrical The Last Bow and to the experimental pastoral piece The Shepherd and the Shepherdess, the writer has acquired new literary qualities and overcome his weaknesses, for example, a certain naivete, limited social horizons and a veneer of sentimentality which Astafiev confesses was a trait of his character in the essay ``Concerned About All Things Living''. Someone has said that sentimentality is not so much kindness as good imagination. In literature, sentimentality often leads to inflated style and at times to downright mawkishness.
The danger of sentimentality is particularly great when a writer deals with inherently dramatic situations, which is the case with most of Astafiev's works: the wretched life of a waif (The Pass), an unhappy childhood (Theft), love at a hospital or at the front amid death (Shooting Stars, The Shepherd and the Shepherdess). One can all too easily slip into melodrama.
The writer steers clear of that pitfall because of his moral and philosophical position, his taste, refinement, skill and talent.
While in The Pass Astafiev overcomes the inherent difficulties of the material by a certain simplification of artistic approach, in Theft he follows a road far more challenging. From deebly truthful but somewhat didactic prose Astafiev turns with increasing boldness to moral-philosophical prose.
To my mind, the originality of Astafiev's talent lies in the combination of seemingly incompatible things: generous and skilful description of everyday detail, high-minded, stern and often harsh realism, on trie one hand, and lyrical, 136 poetic writing, especially in the pages about love and nature which are marked by a highly romantic mood. This does not contradict realism, but deepens it. What we loosely define as the romantic element in the prose of that original realistic writer is, in our view, nothing else than the poetic tension in the perception of the world that is inherent in his talent and artistic soul.
The object of his perception and love is definite: it is Motherland, Russia, its nature and people and their mission on Earth. More specifically, it is the Soviet land, and Soviet Russia because, born as he was ``in the year of Lenin's death'', there is no other Russia for him.
Victor Astafiev's love of his country is pure and highly moral. His conception of the people's spirit derives from trie social and democratic tradition that has been the glory of the great Russian and Soviet literature; of the modern writers nis models are Sholokhov and Leonov, his most recent predecessors being Tvardovsky, Ovechkin and Yashin. The critic Makarov noticed a significant feature about the first collection of his novellas (Falling Leaves) which came out in 1962: Astafiev arranges them not in order of appearance but puts Old Oak first. And the same novella opens his latest collection, Stories About My Contemporary.
In spite of some shortcomings, the story gives a stark and convincing picture of the antiquated mode of life of old believers, with their savage ``ancestral customs".
Astafiev writes with revulsion against the greed, inhumanity and cruelty of which he thinks there was a great deal in old peasant life. He attributes many of the old moral ills to these qualities and to the bondage of religion.
A powerful and natural motif in Astafiev's books is internationalism, which is deeply ingrained in the people's consciousness. Union and not isolation of nations are prompted in Old Oak, The Pass and Theft. The Last Bow opens with a set-piece about Vasya the Pole, a violinist who is going blind. The author neard the music of the Pole's remote, almost forgotten childhood on another occasion when he stood on sentry duty in a devastated Polish town during the last autumn of the war: ``The music soared over the benumbed ruins, the same music that was cherished like a breath of the native land by a man who had spent his life away from his land and had longed for it all his life.''
Among the favourite motifs that run through all his 137 stories is music, and the mysteries it reveals to the perceptive soul of a country boy. Behind it is Astafiev's original idea of the village and its people as an open, a dynamically developing and not isolated world. Parochialism, and concentration on ``paternal customs" leads to savagery and perversion, to what is called the idiocy of rural life, as the writer demonstrates convincingly on many occasions.
The village in Astafiev's world is buffeted by all the winds and storms of the world, is exposed to that world's influence, is part of the life of society and aspires to light, knowledge and civilisation.
The clear view of the people's life was most vividly manifested in Astafiev's drama-laden novella Theft, which was brilliantly reviewed by Alexander Makaroy in his book The Successors. Without going into details, it is a story about an orphanage beyond the Arctic Circle in the late 1930, and the problems facing not only the orphanage director Repnin, but also the ``boss'' of a new town being built on permafrost soil, former Red Army commissar Stupinsky. They are the main protagonists in the story.
The battle for the lives and souls of the children being waged by Valerian Ivanovich Repnin, a humane, kindly man, is illuminated as it were by his tacit dispute with tne city commandant, Stupinsky. At his own risk Stupinsky appointed Repnin, a former Tsarist officer in internal exile, to be the director of the orphanage because the latter was an educated man and loved children. The dispute is won by the Bolshevik Stupinsky; life brings home to Repnin, and to Stupinsky as well, the truth that the Revolution, for all the difficulties and occasional tragedies involved in the building of a new life, was the greatest humanistic act of history. Its morality comprised, not only the universal human values which Repnin tries to foster in the soul of his charges, but also the revolutionary, genuinely humanistic principles which formerly were beyond his mental grips. ``Many work for the happiness of all the people, but they have enemies who want happiness only for themselves,'' says Stupinsky to the children explaining these principles. ``And they have to be fought. We have had to fight them. Perhaps you too will have to fight them. Almost certainly you will.''
Theft draws colourful portraits of children who are placed in tragic circumstances: the village lad Tolya Mazov, who 138 in the beginning is equally open to good and evil, Zina Kondakova, a gentle sweet-tempered girl whom life has treated roughly, a crippled boy nicknamed Paralytic, the shifty Priest and others. The main concern of the story is to show the ginger and infinitely difficult return of the children caught up in such a tragic situation to genuine humanity and human conscience.
A country boy in distress and grief-this is the constant character in Victor Astafiev's books and in his stories most of which are devoted to the hard and heroic pre-war and war years. The Pass, which tells about an orphan boy Ilka and his life among good people, Theft, The Last Bow and, finally, Shooting Stars and The Shepherd and the Shepherdess- all have in effect the same growing character of a child, adolescent and youth, the character of a contemporary who stubbornly strives through all the hardship and trials by hunger, cold, orphanhood and war to light, love and kindness. This hero of Astafiev's stories, whom he loves and we have also come to love so much, is exposed to such hardship and often hideous cruelty that one might expect Astafiev's prose to have a grim and severe quality. Instead, it brightens the soul and even sparks off light in it.
What is the secret of the cathartic effect of his stories? Part of the answer is to be found in the highly original Ode to the Russian Kitchen Garden, a lyrical publicistic piece which in many ways carries on the theme about the boy in adverse circumstances and speaks not about his sorrows but about his joys. The joy of feeling at one with all things living, the mystery of identifying oneself with life, whether in people or nature, which occupies such a large place in Astafiev's writings, in all the living currents of life and work which, from early have fostered his soul despite all the obstacles and taught him that the main mission of man is ``to do good".
``My memory!" the author calls on himself in that passionate piece which deliberately shifts accents compared with Theft or The Pass, ``Do you hear me? Resurrect the boy in me, and let him calm and purify me.'' What is it that makes that boy from the remote and hard years so dear to Victor Astafiev today? He cherishes that boy not only as a nostalgic childhood memory, but because he takes the writer (and the reader) ``to the genuine land where lived genuine and dear people who could love you just 139 so, simply because you are you, and who knew only one kind of payment-reciprocal love.''
The people's consciousness developed the universal human moral norms amid struggle and conflict, as Astafjev's prose attests. The work ethic of the peasant bore an imprint of antiquated, that is, pre-capitalist, and petty property relations. The moral sense of the people should not be treated in a simplistic metaphysical manner. It is a complex and contradictory world, a world which constantly changes with the changing social conditions of the nation.
At its best, the work of Astafiev depicts the life of the working people of Siberia with all its real contradictions and changes as it moves into the future. The writer's acute hatred for social and moral evil, including the bane of proprietary instincts and savage old customs which in the past used to erode the morals of rural folk, is combined with ardent love for the working people whose souls carry genuine humanity and blend universal and new civic morality. Among such people are the Communist Trifon Letyaga, head of a team of rafters in The Pass who opens the gallery of colourful morally pure characters of working people.
The Last Bow is a book of autobiographical novellas and stories that took shape over the years and has at last been brought together into a single narrative, a panorama of the people's life in the 1930s and 1940s. Intimate knowledge of rural life, and a keen memory for detail have contributed to the success of The Last Bow making it a milestone in contemporary prose. The book is assured of a long life not only because the author is undoubtedly talented and has first-hand knowledge of life, but also because he takes a deeply committed stand and a thoughtful and comprehensive view of the people's life which has nothing to do with idealisation but is marked by respect for the village of the collective farm and by love for its people.
The Last Bow is a story about a large peasant family of Potylins focussing on the hero's grandmother, Katerina Petrovna, a powerful, authentic, vividly drawn character. As we leaf through the description of the writer's childhood a lyrical chronicle of a large family and of a Siberian village unfolds before our mental gaze. It is more than a chronicle, however. There is a confessional quality about this piece of prose, imbued as it is with passionate love for Russia and offering insight into the inner world 140 of the heroes, showing what makes them tick. We came in touch with a wide and bright world full of respect, affection and kindness for the common people. What is more, that kindness is not contemplative but socially active and involved.
Of key interest is a novella in the book, called A Photograph in Which I Am Not is about the village school and village teachers. The story of the enthusiastic rural teachers of the 1920s and 1930s, of the universal tacit respect accorded to them in the village and the moving care which the peasants showed towards them has a ring of authenticity. ``Years have elapsed,'' writes Victor Astafiev, ``many years have passed. But I still remember my village teacher as he was, smiling somewhat guiltily, polite and shy, but ever ready to come forward and protect his pupils, help them in their troubles, alleviate and improve the life of people.''
Astafiev draws on the pure elements in the people's morality which come from working on the land and which oppose the spirit of acquisition, social egoism and callousness. He traces the sources of his hero's morality to its roots in the folk culture which is the product of tilling and transforming the land. The strength of the Soviet character that was so dramatically manifested during the war, comes from the deep roots the socialist world outlook has in the age-old aspirations of the working people and the best traditions of the native land. Victor Astafiev associates his Motherland, the Russia of yesterday, today and tomorrow, with Soviet national character embodied in Katerina Petrovna, her numerous children, in Boris Kostyaev and the soldiers of his platoon and in the heroes of his book Kingfish.
It would be no exaggeration to say that never in the history of Russian letters has there been such a broad and many-sided social and psychological interest in the life of the people as there is today. And yet, amid all the diversity-geographical and social-pf the contemporary literary process, Kingfish strikes one's imagination in the same way as a contemporary traveller would probably be overawed by the hinterlands of Siberia on the Yenisei River.
It is as if a hitherto unknown slice of life-strange, wild, harsh and beautiful-began suddenly to speak and reveal its secrets to us. The sensation that the world of Kingfish is revealing itself comes not only from the manner of 141 narrative in which there is no Structured plot. The main thing is the role of the author, his soul which completely merges and dissolves itself in the world of the book and his feeling of identity with this world of which he feels himself to be a spokesman.
The impression is subtly misleading because, although it is partly the result of the author's identification with the reality depicted in the book, it also owes much to Astafiev's craft. For behind the unsophisticated and apparently loose narrative, and the authors identification with the life and characters being portrayed, one is aware of a conscious profoundly modern humanistic attitude arrived at through much thought and suffering. It is the attitude of a man who has exposed his thought and feeling to all the main spiritual ana moral problems of the age, and to direct and indirect human experience. His attitude is by no means identical with that of any of his heroes. Although it does grow from the depth of the people's life and draws on the age-old wisdom of the nation, it has been enriched by Russian and world thought sifted through his own feelings and thought.
The scope and originality of Astafiev's personality have determined the scope and the literary and social impact of Kingfish. The book is the vehicle, not only of the author's unusual life experience, but also of his tormented spirit. Two powerful human feelings form the basis of the Book and mark the author's attitude to the life he is depicting. They are love and pain, the pain at times growing into shame and anger with regard to everything that perpetrates violence on life, perverts and maims it.
The very object of description-pristine Siberian nature, the working people inhabiting Siberia-and the unusual talent and history of the author himself, all lend an epic quality to this book. In it you meet with original characters caught up in extreme situations that tax all their courage, tenacity and endurance. There is something mythological and primordial about the characters of the ``herring man" Akimka, his mother who bore a dozen children by the fishermen calling at the village of Boganida, the fish buyer Kiryaga the Wooden Leg who has lost his leg and procreative capacity at the front, the local fishermen-the Commander and his brother Ignatievich who narrowly escaped being dragged to the bottom by the Kingfish, a giant sturgeon which caught his bait.
142The writer brings sweep and scope to revealing the genuine humanity in the souls of people, in whatever adverse circumstances they find themselves. And his characters are, for the most part, far from ideal. The simple-hearted northerners live here together with the convicts who have been exposed to all the dark sides of taiga life and have nevertheless preserved a basic humanity that weighs on their conscience and makes them act humanely. Astafiev maintains that even the out-and-out villians among them are capable of experiencing ``the elation that comes to a person who does a good deed and is satisfied with the knowledge that he is still capable of good acts. Which means that he is not lost for the family, home and for that other forfeited life".
The capacity for ``doing good" is the hallmark of Astafiev's characters, and it often raises them to height of self-- sacrifice, as in the case of the hunter and fisherman Akimka. These human qualities account for the grit and fortitude of these men displayed so vividly during the war. The Siberian divisions stood their ground in the battle of Moscow and many of Astafiev's heroes might have been among them.
In stark contrast to them are the greedy predators and egoists who have lost their links with the people and the land. So great is the author's aversion for such charactersfor example the heartless individualist Goga Gertsev or the vacationers from remote towns who come to poach the Yenisei taiga forests-that at times he loses his sense of proportion in describing them and slips into lampoon style.
Kingfish is a polemical and passionately involved statement of the author's philosophy or man and his values. Astafiev is convinced that work is the bedrock on which human values rest. Work provides the main link between people's souls.
Joint work and nature are the prime factors that make Astafiev's characters lead a genuinely moral existence. Nature is a spiritual and not only an economic factor in the life of the human race, a necessary condition if man is to remain human. His book is a hymn to Siberian nature which he and the characters take as part of the universe. They often feel themselves to be specks of dust in it. The might and beauty of nature in those parts are often a test of man to which he does not always rise.
143A hymn to nature, Astafiev's book is also a stern warning and caution that is particularly relevant in the age of the scientific and technological revolution.
Kingfish raises an anguished voice against poaching of nature in all its forms. The novellas Black Feathers Went Flying and The Turukhan Lily have a publicistic thrust and are full of wrath. Astafiev writes anxiously about the grandfathers and great grandfathers who for centuries followed the ``wanton'' law in the taiga, which meant that they had their way in it. ``Who can eradicate that hideous habit of doing as one likes in the forest as if it were a strange land?" The habit which sometimes leads to wide-scale poaching in the wild, and therefore defenceless hinterlands of the taiga. But perhaps even greater damage is inflicted on nature by thoughtless economic activity and the desire to ``harness'' nature at any cost.
The public significance of Astafiev's book lies, among other things, in that it helps us to learn to use the `` advantages of our social system'', to borrow Aitmatov's phrase in the above-cited dialogue ``Harmony Is Inevitable".
It would, however, be unpardonably narrow to interpret Astafiev's Kingfish in ecological terms as merely a plea For the preservation of the environment. Nature is important for the writer inasmuch as it is necessary for man's body and soul.
Man is the focus of his worries and concerns. The kind of man that is near and dear to him, the kind of man he used to know in his childhood and adolescence, and met again on his recent visit to his birthplace. ``My native Siberia has changed, and everything has changed,'' concludes the writer. ``Everything flows, everything changes. This is the way it was, is, and will be.'' Will Siberian nature and the people who have grown in her bosom withstand the test of that change?
The book leaves the question open because only life can answer it. But the question has been put and it worries the writer. The change is headlong, and as the author repeatedly stresses in his book, it is all for the better. Suffice it to compare the wretched, hungry, miserable childhood of Akimka and the comfort and security of our present-day life; a civilised life-TV sets, powerful engines and all-that has come to the banks of the Yenisei River as well.
What, then, is there to worry about? ``What am I 144 looking for? Why am I tormented? Why? And to what end?~" asks the writer in the final lines.
He is tormented because he wants to see ways of preserving, amid the new, civilised and comfortable life, the humanistic values of the working people which made people like Akimka real human beings in spite of any trials. How does one preserve the old while acquiring the new? How to make these external changes be paralleled by inner changes, so that morality could resist spiritual poachers, so that man's conscience should not be eroded by the acquisitive instincts and lust for gain which thrive even on technological progress?
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 3Russian literature has always concerned itself not only with the individual but also with society. Genuine big art is impossible without a sense of civic responsibility to society and country, without patriotic concern about the good of the country and her people, about the best and surest ways of achieving common good, without modern knowledge of society and intense thought, without an artistic conscience. That law of art, formulated by Belinsky, fully applies to the contemporary literature.
Tnere is deep meaning in the fact that Soviet literature today again and again ``queries and questions the past" in order that, to use Belinsky's words, ``it should explain to us our present and give us a hint about our future'', help us find answers to the basic questions of our time, notably the question about the spiritual and moral values of today. The more significant works of prose in this country are increasingly marked by a historical and philosophical approach to the reality portrayed, and a probing into the most complex problems of lire and the human spirit.
This is true not only of historical fiction, such as Yuri Trifonov's Impatient Ones or Boris Bursov's investigative novel The Personality of Dostoievsky, Dmitri Balashov's historical novels Lord Novgorod the Great and Martha, the Mayor of Novgorod or the works of that great connoisseur of Russia's past, critic Sergei Markov. This is true also of the approach to life which is becoming established in the prose anout the present.
__PRINTERS_P_145_COMMENT__ 6---835 145This provides the methodological key that alone could explain to us the important phenomenon of our spiritual culture that is Vassili Shukshin. The public recognition that has been extended to his work particularly after his untimely death highlighted the true scope and significance of his versatile talent. One of Vassih Shukshin's characters says: ``Yesenin lived a short life. Exactly as long as it takes to make a song. If the song were longer it would not have been so haunting. Songs cannot be long.''
What is the message of the short and haunting song of Vassili Shukshin, actor, film director, but first and foremost, writer? One recalls that when the film Red Snowball Tree came out and won a prize at an international film festival, some foreign critics raised their eyebrows: they wondered how a film promoting Christianity, and the Russian Orthodox elements of the peasant soul, could not only have been released in that mysterious USSR, but even won official support.
What an extraordinary failure to understand the nature of Vassili Shukshin's talent and the nature of the Russian peasant! As early as 1847, Belinsky wrote to Gogol: `` According to you, the Russian people is the most religious people in the world: that is a lie!... Take a closer look at it and you will see that it is profoundly atheistic people by nature. There is still much superstition in it, but not a trace of religiosity... Mystic exaltation is not part of its nature; it has too much common sense, a clear and positive intelligence, and in this perhaps lies the vastness of its historical destinies in the future.''
Shukshin has a story called ``I Believe!" in which one hears the abiding and disturbing theme that is so characteristic of the writer: ``The soul acnes...'' The note is also heard in the story ``Master'' about an ``unmatched carpenter" and never-do-well. Semka Rys drinks because that way ``there is at least some meaning'', and hankers after beauty because his ``soul asks for it''; and in the story ``A Ticket for the Second Show" whose main character, the storekeeper Timofei Khudyakov, makes a fool of himself because ``he pities himself and regrets the (meaningless -F. K.) life he has lived''. Failed lives is the subject also of the story `` Shameless" in which old age pensioners argue endlessly over the same question: ``One can live a hundred years... But is there any meaning? Elephants live to be two hundred, but what is the point?''
146Such are the bizarre, comic, half-educated people, children, one might say, of demi-culture but no less gifted and unpredictable for all that, who people Shukshm's stories. The writer is often harshly realistic in describing the characters he has discovered. They live in the present time, when, as one of them says, everybody is rushing somewhere. They reflect a whole epoch of the great migration from country to town, and gradual but steady assimilation of urban culture in the village.
The mood of Shukshin's writing is anything but beautific or idyllic. In the story ``I Believe!" the main character, a collective farmer by the name of Maxim Yarikov, afflicted by ``soul ache'', visits a priest who has come to the countryside for his health in order to ask him whether `` believers ever have a soul ache''. Over a bottle of alcohol, the priest confides to Maxim that his soul also ``aches'' because ``there is no God''. But the priest goes on to assert that ``there is God. God is Life. I believe in that god. He is a severe and powerful god. And with this god in mind, I say to myself, 'Your soul aches? That's fine! Fine! With peace of soul, they wouldn't be able to drag you off the warm bed... You want to know what to believe in? You guessed right, those who believe don't have soul ache. But in what should you believe? Believe in Life.''
It is one of the few stories in which Shukshin utters important, confessional truths in ``his own voice'', for we have no doubt that the reflections of the weird drunken priest are the author's own thoughts. The story ends in typical Shukshin fashion:
``The priest effortlessly lifted Maxim by the collar with one hand and made him stand next to him.
``'Repeat after me: I believe!'
``'I believe!' said Maxim.
``'Louder! And solemnly: I believe! Together: I be-lieve!'
``'Be-lieve!' they chanted in chorus.
``Then the priest continued alone in well-practiced rapid talk:
`` 'In Aviation, Chemisation, Mechanisation of Agriculture, in Scientific Revolution. In Outer Space and Weightlessness I believe, for all these things are objective! Together with me!
``...When Ilyukha Lapshin opened his eyes he saw the __PRINTERS_P_147_COMMENT__ 6* 147 priest heaving his huge powerful body in a squatting dance, slapping himself on the sides and chest and roaring,
``~`I believe, I believe!'~"
On occasion, though, Shukshin fell back on the tested device of a lyrical publicistic digression, and then we readers are exposed to his troubled thoughts and feelings. This is the final passage of ``Uncle Yermolay'', an autobiographical story about a farm team leader of his childhood who had struck him by his keen sense of truth and compulsive desire for honesty. ``I stand over the grave and think. My simple thoughts are about him: he was an eternal worker, a kind and honest man. As, for that matter, all people here, like my granddad, and grandma. A simple thought, but for all that, I cannot bring it to its conclusion with all my degrees and books. For instance: was their life informed with higher meaning? The way they had lived it, that is. Or perhaps there was no meaning, nothing but work, work... They worked and bore children. Since then I've met other people... They are no shirkers, mind you. But they take a different view of their life. I myself take a different view of mine. And yet when I look at their mounds, I wonder who is right, who is cleverer?''
These were the questions that haunted Shukshin. Haying come to Moscow from a remote Altai village, he avidly drank in the air of modern knowledge and rose to the heights of culture while preserving links with his native Altai land. That combination has enabled him to avoid a one-sided, narrow view of life, to take off the blinkers that prevent one from seeing the world in all its variety, depth and volume. Culture and knowledge, achieved through tireless daily work of the mind and soul, helped him to reveal the full range of his native talents.
[148] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Five __ALPHA_LVL1__ To Be a Real Man __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1There is hardly one article on literary criticism published in the Soviet Union today that does not treat of the matters of the spirit and morality and does not champion the spiritual and moral values of the individual. That is natural. We have already said that the imperatives of developed socialism, the scientific-technological revolution and the new phenomena in economic and social life it brings demand that writers and critics take a closer look at the dialectic of the development of the spiritual and moral perceptions of society, ana be intolerant of anything that still prevents man from being human in the highest sense of the word. To be able to do that, the writers and critics need a solid philosophical frame of reference, a methodology of critical analysis of the spiritual and moral quests of the present-day literature.
A simplistic attitude is just as dangerous here as forgetting the basic premises concerning spiritual and moral values.
Dozens of the great moralists of the past dreamt about perfect man and about relations among people based on kindness and justice. However, neither passionate preachings, nor angry tirades and exposures, nor calls to moral selfperfection brought mankind to the promised land.
Answering the moralists who hoped to change the imperfect world through preaching, Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology that communists see no use in moral preaching, which the said moralists pursued with excessive zeal.
Does it mean that Marxism denies morality and ethics?
A lot of effort has been expended to prove precisely that, and to show that communism and morality are mutually exclusive, that revolution destroys morality, philosophical 149 materialism kills spiritual values, and socialism stunts the individuality.
Replying to such critics of Marxism, Lenin stressed that communists denied only such morality as is produced by a society based on private property, and such a concept of morality that stems from the idea of divine providence. From his early works, Lenin consistently argued that moral awareness is socially determined. ``The system of appropriating the surplus labour of tied-to-the-land serf peasants created feudal morality; the system of 'free labour for others', for the owners of money, created bourgeois morality to replace it,"^^1^^ he pointed out. That ``morality'', he stressed, is inevitably based on money and is therefore a source of egoism and lack of spirituality. Inasmuch as its roots are social, this morality cannot be destroyed by moral preachings. The lack of spirituality and immorality of the world of gain and social egoism can only be overcome by transforming social relations, and not by moralising.
Lenin underlined that the principle of determinism in moral consciousness, ``in no way destroys man's reason or conscience, or appraisal of his actions'';^^2^^ it by no means denies the universal human content in morality and merely warns against confusing ``a standpoint common to all mankind^ with ``a common servile standpoint".^^3^^
Unable to challenge the economic, scientific and technological advances of socialism, our ideological opponents assert that the new society, while it has provided people with bread, would be incapable of solving the question of food for the spirit. It is the height of perfidy that the drama of spiritual emptiness, amorality and inner desolation that affects bourgeois society is shamelessly attributed to socialism.
As it is, socialism offers a real antithesis to the spiritual poverty and amorality that form the essence of the so-called ``consumer society''. The Great October Socialist Revolution for the first time in history took the humanistic ideal from the sphere of illusions to the practical sphere.
The spiritual emptiness and mercenariness of the mad world of gain do not come from the fact that people have lost ``the God in their souls'', the moral absolutes. The cause and effect relationship is rather the reverse: the earthly _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Work, Vol. 1, p. 38-i.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 159.
~^^3^^ Ibid., Vol. 13, p. 53. 150
150 socio-economic conditions and circumstances pervert morality to make a Prince Myshkin an idiot and the Chichikovs the norm, to establish a set-up whereby ``what is inherent in an animal becomes the lot of man and what is human is turned into the properties of an animal'', as Karl Marx put it.In Russian classical literature, the idea was perhaps put even more starkly by Herzen than by Gogol and Dostoyevsky. Read his ``Letters from France and Italy" and those chapters in My Past and Thoughts in which he discovered for himself and his Russian readers the European bourgeoisie, ``the philistines'', as he called them.
``They have one religion,'' wrote Herzen, ``property with all its Roman-feudal consequences,... one overriding passion: profit, gain, agiotage.''
Describing the ``philistine'' mores that had become prevalent in Europe and that ``constitute a whole, i.e. selfcontained view of life'', Herzen wrote: ``All that has remained of morality is that the poor should do everything to acquire and the rich to preserve and multiply their property. On the one hand, there are the philistine proprietors who stubbornly refuse to concede their monopolies, and on the other, the poor philistines who would fike to wrest their fortunes from them, but are not strong enough; i.e. greed on the one hand and envy on the other.''
Marx was the first to reveal in rigorously scientific terms the all-pervading spiritual emptiness of the bourgeois world. It consists in the alienation oT man from his human essence. Money and things enslave man, become the chief measure and sole criterion of values and at the same time a consistent ``negation of man".
The communist ideal has nothing to do either with the hypocritical ``philosophy'' of poverty as ``good'', nor with the bourgeois cult of things that enslaves man. In Marxist-Leninist view, material wealth is created to meet the reasonable requirements of men and is a prerequisite of the development of human faculties and the flourishing of the individual. In fact the Revolution was carried out in order to give all people-and not the select few!-the necessary material benefits: food, clothing and shelter; and in order that public wealth should flow abundantly and meet everyone's needs.
But not only for that. Communism conceives of material 151 benefits as a means, not an end in itself, the necessary condition of human existence but not its meaning. The meaning lies elsewhere: it is harmonious, all-round development of the individual.
That great humanistic goal is the essence of the communist idea engendered by new production and social relations.
The humanistic advantages of the new social relations, however, are not realised automatically, i.e. without struggle and contradictions. Even as men humanise the objective social conditions, the role of the moral element, moral education and self-education of the individual grows proportionately. It becomes a social necessity that in the new and changing world everyone should, according to Marx, learn and assimilate all that is genuinely human and should know himself as man.
This social heed is met today by the deepened interest in spiritual and moral laws of life, a process so characteristic of present-day Soviet literature. As two sides of the same trend, writers and critics today are upholding the genuine spiritual values of man and at the same time are increasingly intolerant of the hangovers of bourgeois consciousness in whatever form they manifest themselves. Many modern writers warn of the dangers of spiritual and moral Vacuum for man and society.
Rejection of spiritually barren, trivial existence has long teen an abiding motif of the writings of Yuri Trifonov beginning from his novel Quenching of Thirst in which engineer Karabash and the head of a construction project, Yermasov, are contrasted with people who put their career and personal comfort above the interests of society and their work.
Trifonov's stories ``The Doctor, the Student and Mitya'', ``Children of Doctor Grisha'', ``Poppies'', ``It Was Summer Noon" and ``An Autumn Rich with Mushrooms" are in a sense precursors of his novellas Exchange, Preliminary Results and A Long Goodbye.
War against desert in human souls runs through the •whole of Trifonov's prose. Although on the face of it his stories offer little or no social comment, they are marked by the same civic attitude. For all the apparent understatement of his writing, the characters are sharply delineated and their attitude to life, their work and our common cause are clearly defined.
152Doctor Liakhov in ``The Doctor, the Student and Mitya" initially strikes us as an unpleasant, fretful man. For all we know, he probably is unpleasant. His irascible temper displayed in conversation with the driver Mitya, his envy for the chance fellow-traveller, a student who, Liakhov feels, might leave the desert at any moment and go home to Moscow, an opportunity Liakhov himself will never have, are hardly the best of human qualities. We feel a positive dislike of Liakhov, but not until he opens up as a doctor, a practitioner of a sacred profession. The travellers, who have lost their way in the desert, and are hungry and tired, run into a man who needs urgent medical help, and Liakhov undergoes a metamorphosis. He proves to be a man of lofty morality for whom the Hippocratic oath is not an empty set of rules.
There is nothing spectacularly heroic about what he does, he goes about his business with efficiency and determination. He behaves in such a way that his companions immediately fall quiet and begin to fulfil his orders because they feel that when Liakhov is working it doesn't pay to argue with him''. The stern efficiency and professional skill with which he performs the operation, ana his good reputation in the district all convince us that the desert life of that man, who originally struck us as unsympathetic, is a heroic feat in the name of man.
Trifonov as a writer has a soft spot in his heart for such people, and he carefully watches his language when writing about them in his understated spare manner, protecting the characters against any sentimental or high-- sounding rhetoric.
The main thrust of Yuri Trifonov's writings is to assert the new morals that have been conditioned by the new kind of social relations. The writer has his tried criteria of morality and humanity embodied in people such as doctor Liakhov.
These criteria are indicative of his affinity with people who are workers and fighters, and they stem from our revolutionary consciousness, from Leninist ideals of Revolution and socialism which the writer has analysed so perceptively in his documentary book The Gleam of a Fire devoted to his father, an old Bolshevik revolutionary.
Trifonov is endowed with a special gift of sensing lack of spirituality that desiccates human hearts. Even when he 153 writes about the trivia of life he is highly sensitive to moral aspects of human behaviour and is intolerant of any deviation from true humanity.
This quality of his work is probably best seen in the psychological study of the spiritual fall of a certain Dmitriev, the main character in the novella called Exchange. His inner weakness and shaky moral principles make him yield to the aggressive materialism of his wife and her family. The story traces with relentless logic the dialectic of moral treachery and compromises on ethical matters which makes Dmitriev ``exchange'' not only his apartment but also his moral and eventually ideological principles. It is an inadequate exchange, because he has traded genuine and lofty human values for base and immoral principles. As a result he has lost his integrity and become a person alienated from truth, honesty, conscience, and himself.
When the main character of the story, instigated by his wife, offers his dying mother to exchange her flat and move in with him into a bigger apartment so as not to lose the ``dwelling space" that would shortly be ``vacated'', he deservedly gets the following reply: ``You have already made the exchange, Vitya. The exchange has taken place a long time ago. And it occurs all the time, every day. So don't be surprised, Vitya. And don't be angry. It happened so imperceptibly...''
But is Dmitriev a victim or a predator? In the case of the Lukianovs, his wife's family, everything is clear: they are predators, go-getters, patent philistines, so to say. And this is also true of the playwright Smolianov from the novella A Long Goodbye. He applies the methods of the Lukianovs, who direct their inoorn enterprise to satisfying their lust for gain, in literature and is doing very well for himself, and is even claiming the right to set new trends.
While Smolianov in A Long Goodbye is a figure out of the past, Hartvig, Ph.D., from Preliminary Results is a thoroughly modern specimen. He hides his withering cynicism and biological egotism behind a fashionable guise of an intellectual^ interested in antiquity and the traditions of Russian idealism. The masks can be different, ranging from interest in the Byzantine tradition to parapsychology and ``flying saucers'', but the essence remains the same: sophisticated yet cynical egoism.
154Yuri Trifonov's prose in recent years offers a whole gallery of typical characters who reveal the essence of modern social egoism with its ``consumer'' attitude to people and life. The gallery starts with the Lukianovs, who bear many of the marks of philistinism in its primitive form, and ends with Hartvig or Levin in the story ``An Autumn Rich with Mushrooms'', who embody its refined and updated versions.
In Yuri Trifonov's prose, man is measured by the understanding of the supreme meaning of life. It is not by chance that people in his books are often tested by the death of a relative, the death of the mother in ``An Autumn Rich with Mushrooms" and in the novella Exchange. Other writers, too, subject their characters to such a test.
Think of Rasputin's The Last Break, Belov's All in a Day's Work and Bykov's Sotnikov, all exemplifying philosophical prose. I believe the central problem in all these books is that of spiritual values and the meaning of life.
The question of the meaning of life is an eternal question and every person and every epoch give their own solution to it. Religion's claim to a monopoly in its solution is unjustified.
Once I came upon a book entitled The Solution of the Problem of Life written by a Hieronimite monk, Fernand Lellote, and published by La Vie avec Dieu publishing house in Brussels. It came out in a huge edition and is aimed primarily at present-day youth. Its glossy cover shows the Alps spanned by a power transmission line and a young man in a modern skiing suit looking thoughtfully into the distance.
Lellote begins his conversation with the reader by inviting him to do some simple arithmetics: multiply the days or the year by the average number of years in a man's life, say 365X70 = 25,550 days. On the average every person is allotted twenty-five and a half thousand days on this sinful Earth. So what is the purpose of your being here? asks Lellote. One must hand it to the Catholic writer that he can make a good sales job of his ideas: the point-blank question might take one by surprise, especially if one counts the quick-passing days of one's life, subtracts the time of infancy and senility and the number of years one has already lived. It is another matter that Lellote's answer to the question is far from original: understanding God.
155The question of the meaning of life is very important for a person. The daily moral existence of the individual depends on the answer to that question. According to ethics, the answer to the question ``What is right living?" is conditional on the answer to the questions, ``What does one live for? In the name of what?" Without answering the second question it is impossible to answer the first, if we seek to follow the moral norms consciously: why one should act in one way and not in another, and why this is good and that is bad.
Religion, which claims to have the monopoly in solving the problem of the meaning of life, maintains that the question cannot be answered outside God. This provides our ideological opponents with their main premise in accusing socialism of ``lack of spirituality".
But haven't the Russian revolutionaries of the past-the revolutionary democrats, Narodniks and People's Will revolutionaries-being convinced materialists and atheists, set examples of the highest spirituality and morality? Can one claim that the people who stormed the sky, as Karl Marx put it, carried out the first socialist revolution in the world, upheld its gains during the Civil War, and then during the Great Patriotic War of 1941--1945, ``held nothing sacred"? It is another matter that our conception of what is ``sacred'' is fundamentally different from the meaning the church reades into it, and that the revolutionaries and communists solve the problems of life on earth and not in heaven.
Man wants to see meaning in his personal existence in order to behave meaningfully.
A village truck driver in Vassili Shukshin's story tells his next-door neighbour, an old man: ``To live like you is no problems to me. I want something more...'' And then, the writer notes, he said without jest and with a kind of sneaking anxiety: ``Come to think of it, I don't know what I live for... I'm wondering. I am nobody's fool. But how to set my soul at peace? What is this damned soul of mine asking for?''
For people in the bondage of social egoism and individualism, the question does not exist. To them, the meaning of life consists in amassing and consuming material values and in meeting the most elementary of needs. That lack of spirituality can take on the most sophisticated and diverse forms in the age of science and technology.
156Consumer attitude to life includes consumption of cultural values. One can be a refined consumer, say, of music and art objects and be an aesthete. And yet, so long as consumption, let it be the most sophisticated consumption, of values is the goal and meaning of one's existence, so long as one gives nothing to other people, one remains a spiritually bereft personality, alienated from one's human essence.
The sources of the alienation of man from his human essence are, without any doubt, of a social nature. In the capitalist society they are generated by the production relations based on private property. Under socialism, lack of spirituality is chiefly due to the survivals of petty-bourgeois, pnilistine morality.
So: the Luk'ianovs, Smolianov and even Hartvig are devoid of spirituality.
But what of Dmitriev? And what of the Dmitrievs? Not in the generalised sense, but in the meaning of the Dmitriev family which produced Lena Lukianova's husband whom she brought around to her ways?
Dmitriev in Trifonov's books finds himself at the intersection of the two opposing sets of characters. On the one hand, there is Dmitriev himself, Volodya from ``An Autumn Rich with Mushrooms'', Gennady Sergeyevich, a hack translator from Preliminary Results, married to a Lena who in this story bears the name of Rita, and finally, Grisha Rebrov, a failed writer in A Long Goodbye.
Another set of characters, to which Dmitriev himself belonged before the ``exchange'', includes his mother Ksenia Fyodorovna, his grandfather Fyodor Nikolayevich and, one might assume, the whole family. They are the people of the intelligentsia opposing ``philistinism''.
But then Lena Lukianova, Dmitriev's wife, is also an intellectual by profession. She has written some kind of textbook. Why is she not included in the intelligentsia?
The author puts that question in a slightly different, way, ``Why was it that two intellectual and universally respected women, who both loved Dmitriev, also a good person, and his daughter Natashka, harboured mutual dislike of each other which kept growing with years?''
The confrontation between these two characters-Lena and Ksenia Fyodorovna-expresses the clash of two opposing types of morality in the story. Lena, of course, 157 represents the ``Lukianov'' camp, and she behaves accordingly: ``Lena has always been spiritually, not deaf-that would be too strong a word-but somewhat off focus, and that became more pronounced when Lena's strongest quality came into play, and that is the ability to get what she wanted,'' the author tells us early on in the story. And he shows to us in many subtle ways that she was ``emotionally underdeveloped, not quite making the grade as a human being''. What is the morality expressed by Ksenia Fyodorovna? What is the real background to her character?
Above all, the spiritual traditions of our society that are linked with the advanced Russian intelligentsia of the last century. The most complete and unalloyed embodiment of that tradition is Dmitnev's grandfather, Fyodor Nikolayevich. ``There are not many such old men left in Russia, and there are even fewer lawyers who finished. St. Petersburg University, and those who engaged in revolutionary affairs in their youth, were imprisoned in a fortress, exiled and escaped abroad, worked in Switzerland and Belgium, and were personally acquainted with Vera Zasulich could be countea on the fingers of one's hands.'' The old man had ``a face with purplish-yellow tanned skin and craggy work-beaten, unbending hands''. A rather unexpected detail that, isn't it?
``All Lukianov ways were so alien to him that he simply could not understand some things.'' He did not understand how Dmitriev's wife ``Helen the Fair'', and her mother, addressed the worker who mended the springs in their couch with an arrogant ``thou''. He could not understand their ability to give bribes and cheat. Lena said laughingly, ``Fyodor Nikolayevich, you are a prehistoric monster! A weflpreserved monster.''
Let it be noted that not only the novella Exchange but many other novellas of Yuri Trifonov are in some way associated with the best traditions of the intelligentsia of the past. Here is the family tree of Grisha in A Long Goodbye: One of his grandmothers was an exiled Pole,... the great grandfather was a serf and the grandfather was involved in student disturbances and exiled to Siberia.'' Grisha devotes all his free time to historical investigations about Pryzhov, a revolutionary of tlje 1860s.
The Dmitrievs' association with the best traditions of the Russian intelligentsia is a matter of family pride and 158 the main bone of contention between Lena and Ksenia Fyodorovna in Exchange. ``How many people take pride in all sorts of impossible things, myths and chimeras! It is ridiculous!" says Lena to Ksenia Fyodorovna.
This trifling remark gave rise to a conversation that led to Lena having a fit of nerves at night, to the summoning of an ambulance, the shouts of Lena's mother about egotism and callousness, and then Ksenia Fyodorovna's departure and a sudden quiet that settled over the summer cottage when the two of them were left alone: Dmitriev and the old man. ``They walked by the lakeside and talked a great deal. Dmitriev wanted to talk about Lena... But the old man did not say a word about Lena and her parents. He spoke about death and said he did not fear it. He had fulfilled what had been assigned to him in life... The old man said that his past, all nis interminably long life, did not engage him; nothing is more stupid than looking for ideals in the past.''
The character of Fyodor Nikolayevich, though sketchily drawn, is very important for Trifonov, and for the readers. It provides a key to the moral position of the author who regards Fyodor Nikolayevich as the quintessential Russian intellectual. He measures both the Lukianovs and the Dmitrievs by the moral standards of such people.
Outside this one cannot understand the spiritual traditions of the Dmitrievs, nor can one quite understand what it was that Dmitriev had ``exchanged'', in Ksenia Fyodorovna's view, when he became ``Lukianovised''.
In this connection one might recall another novella of Yuri Trifonov, Preliminary Results, in particular the main character's argument with Hartvig. The latter worships the Russian idealistic philosophers-Vassili Rozanov and Konstantin Leontiev-and these are precisely the philosophers who were the most consistent and fierce enemies of the world view espoused by Fyodor Nikolayevich. The main character of Preliminary Results, Gennady Sergeyevich, once angrily referred to the object of Hartvig's enthusiasm as beJiber diayevs (``bubblers''), coining a Russian word that plays on the name of Berdiayev. That of course, is not much of an argument. And the argument is not pursued in depth and is merely necessary for Trifonov to express his rejection of modern speculations on the trend of thought that is alien to him.
159As regards the past, everything is clear. As Fyodor Nikplayevicn rightly says in Exchange, ``nothing is more stupid than looking for ideals in the past''. So one must look for them in the present, without of course forgetting the spiritual and moral traditions of the past. Where does one find them in contemporary life, what opposes the threat of ``Lukianovisation'', the threat of spiritual vacuum that is very real for some people?
If one looks at the whole body of Trifonov's writing, one finds characters providing an answer to that question. They are, for example, engineer Karabash and head of construction project Yermasov in Quenching of Thirst, Doctor Liakhov in ``The Doctor, the Student and Mitya'', ``doctor Grisha" in the story ``Children of Doctor Grisha''. They are all people of spirituality. But, as Soviet critics have noted, in his novellas there are no such noble characters.
How does one account for this fact? Apparently it happens because in his novellas the writer has set out to raise and solve the question about the danger of lost spirituality without putting his characters in extreme situations. ``Everyday life is a great test,'' Yuri Trifonov once noted. ``One should not speak about it scoffingly as the trivial side of life that is not worth writing about. Ordinary life is a testing ground where the new morality of today is revealed and tried. The relations among people are also part of everyday life.'' That is true. But man lives not only by everyday concerns, but also by concerns of the spirit, involvement in the life of the community and in human history. While the characters of Karabasn and Yermasov, Liakhov and ``doctor Grisha" are revealed in their work for a cause that is ``larger than they'', because it is not only their personal but a public concern, and while they take a highly moral, civic and socially committed stand in this cause, which is the source of their spirituality, the characters of Exchange, Preliminary Results and A Long Goodbye have no such cause.
We cannot hope to understand present-day philistinism if we think of it only in moral, and not in social terms, and if we proceed from the diverse and disparate manifestations of philistinism that are rather the consequence than the essence of the phenomenon. Now, its essence, for all the various guises it assumes, is the same as in Herzen's 160 times and later, in Gorky's times, namely, private property and acquisitive instincts.
In coming out against smug conventionalism, classic Russian literature came out against the petty-bourgeois consciousness produced by private property and exposed the proprietor and the bourgeois. And when we speak about philistinism in the present-day world we mean the survivals of petty-bourgeois consciousness, petty-bourgeois psychology ana morality in the post-revolutionary time, the time which sees the building of new society.
The Revolution and socialism have destroyed the social and economic basis for proprietary attitudes and morals. Socialist relations, which nave great formative influence on the new man, have made heavy inroads on petty-bourgeois consciousness, compromised the narrow philistine ideals and placed the philistine in generally unfavourable conditions. The clever money-grubber, the usurer, the slave of gain and a builder of the iron cage of the state in the past, the philistine has now become a dwarf,'' wrote Gorky back, in the 1930s. But he added: ``Although he is tiny, he is nevertheless harmful like dust, like the fumes from the marches, the gases of decaying organic substances. There are many poisonous admixtures in the air we breathe. That is very harmful, and it should be combatted tirelessly.''
Although the relations characteristic of petty proprietors and petty bourgeoisie are gone in this country, the mentality and morality which had been shaped by the old world over such a long period of time survive, albeit in a weakened and modified form.
It is common knowledge that the spheres of material existence and consciousness are linked in a complex dialectical relationship. It is also common knowledge that while being determines consciousness, the latter lags behind material existence. That is why the elimination of private ownership of means of production does not automatically destroy the consciousness based on private ownership, petty-bourgeois mentality and morality. These ``poisonous admixtures" sometimes yield the most unexpected chemical compounds that Eollute the atmosphere. Philistinism has always been a pettyourgeois philosophy of life, petty-bourgeois psychology and morality. Its social essence has not changed although its position in life has changed, has been narrowed, .and so have the forms in which it manifests itself in social life.
161The changes in the guise of the modern philistine are due not only to the changes in the social environment but also due to the remarkable capacity of that unusual enemy to adapt itself to a basically hostile social environment. The mimicry and adaptation or the philistine consists in discovering such forms of social existence which would enable him to indulge his social egoism to the highest possible degree even in the socialist community, which is hostile to philistinism.
Among the more serious and wide-spread manifestations of philistine consciousness are lack of scruple, time-serving, career-seeking, and demagogy, all masking profound indifference to everything except personal success.
The problem of philistinism in the present day conditions, then, is, as in the past, the problem of social egoism engendered by the old world or property. Yet, even though its roots are in the past and it has no future, Soviet literature does not regard the phenomenon with complacency. A sober approach is needed here, and a sober scientific approach implies historicism, first and foremost.
Lenin repeatedly warned against naive identification of the lowest and highest phases of communist society and against starry-eyed hopes that all the social and spiritual problems would be solved at one fell swoop at the first phase of the new society. In Chapter 5 of his The State and Revolution Lenin quoted one of the basic provisions of Marx' Critique of the Gotha Programme about socialism as the first phase of communist society. Marx wrote: ``What we have to deal with here [in analysing the programme of the workers' party] is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it comes.'' Marx pointed out that socialism, the first phase of communism, destroys private property and exploitation of man by man, and places people in equal relation to the means of production, but does not yet give complete and final material equality because it presupposes distribution according to work and not according to need. ``In fact, everyone, having performed as much social labor as another, receives an equal share of the social product... But people are not alike; one is strong, another is weak; one 162 is married, another is not; one has more children, another has less, and so on... The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality: differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production- the factories, machines, land, etc.-and make them private property.''
It is only under Communism, said Lenin, when labour will become so productive that all people would voluntarily come to work according to their ability that it would be possible to overcome the narrow horizon of bourgeois law that makes one count with the relentlessness of a Shylock lest one should have to work half an hour more than another and lest one should get less pay than another.
One cannot afford to ignore these key theses of Marx and Lenin in analysing the complex formative process .of socialist morality. And in addition to the objective contradictions of the transitional period from socialism to communism viewed in an ideal way, there have been the difficulties of our real historical road connected with the war and hardships, errors and miscalculations-the material and moral price of oeing the trail-blazers implementing the socialist ideal in a formerly poor peasant country surrounded by enemies...
While being intolerant of social egoism we must be realistic and must understand that the difficult task of bringing up a new man, hence, of overcoming petty-bourgeois philistine mentality and morality, is not being solved in the sphere of consciousness alone, nor is it being solved as quickly as we would like it to be. In the final analysis, it will be solved by the persistent work of the nation which continues to develop its productive forces and to lay the economic foundation of communism, transforming itself in the process.
The fact that Soviet society is waging a consistent and uncompromising struggle against philistinism is the surest sign of the spiritual and moral health of Soviet society and its loyalty to the behests of Lenin.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2When Vladimir Alenochkin, head of the Black Ravine rafting section, introduced newly-arrived young engineers, 163 Maxim Kovalyov and Boris Egorov, to their new jobs in Vil Lipatov's novella Black Ravine, he did not unfold bright prospects before them. Instead he took them to the nver bank and sat on a bunch of logs with them.
`` 'Now, my fellow-engineers!' he said. 'According to modern novels and stories, I, the boss,' he thrust a finger at his chest, 'am supposed to be a conservative. And you, young engineers, are supposed to be advanced people. I am expected to stifle everything new and progressive! Right?'
`` 'Right,' said Maxim.
``'Well, then let me tell you from'the start that I am not a conservative.' Alenochkin raised his finger solemnly. 'I vote with my both hands,' and he raised the other hand for emphasis, 'I vote with my both hands for all the new and progressive things.'"
Alenochkin knows what a modern manager should be like and he is going out of his way to look like one. Everything about nim-his face, carriage and relaxed mannerbespeaks a forward-looking, strong-willed, energetic manager who is attentive to people, dedicated to his work, and open to new ideas. He has a strong, courageous, honest face. His deep voice and his manner with people are pleasant: ``It seems that he does not make the decisions nimself but makes those present think about them.'' He can be found in his office at one in the morning, and at six he can already be seen making the round of the site with the measured steps of a boss. He is always cheerful, neat and trim, and ready with a smile and a joke. In between pay days, workers drop by at his flat to borrow money from their chief. And things are going well at his section, which has been among the best for several years running. No wonder the young engineer Maxim Kovalyov immediately comes to regard Alenochkin as an excellent boss and a good person.
The only person who really understands him is his sisterin-law, the old school-teacher Sofia Borisovna, whom Alenochkin derisively calls an ``idealist''. Tiny, thin, with sharp shoulder-blades, she is impulsive and perky despite her age. Her character is outlined with a few touches but we know the type from life and literature. She makes us think of the YCL'ers of the 1920s who preserved intact their high convictions and youthful purity of soul throughout their lives. This is Sofia Borisovna.
164``'When I was going to the village from the city for the first time, I was happy! I wanted the peasants to become literate and cultured and I did not fear the sawn-off rifles of the kulaks, frosts and snow-storms. I knew what I was fighting for... And you, Boris Petrovich, do you have an idea to guide you? What has brought you to Black Ravine? An idea?'"
Sofia Borisovna is very sensitive of Alenochkin's lack of commitment. She understands that despite all the trappings, Alenochkin is ``a philistine in his heart and thoughts , only he is a ``philistine of a higher order, not one of those whom you can tell by caged canaries and frills in their homes''. She suffers because she does not see how Alenochkin can be ``driven into a corner".
``'You want facts? Can't you see that such peciple as Alenochkin do not like the facts that reveal them for the philistines that they are? Facts. Look at this.' She quickly scans the room. 'Rugs, sideboards, china, chandeliers, more rugs. And this,' she angrily strikes her little fist against the wall where hangs an expensive still life. 'What is this, I ask you?'
`` 'It's good furnishings,' notes Boris.
``'For Alenochkin it's more than good furnishings. It's the meaning of his life,' Sofia Borisovna says in a shrill voice.''
Perhaps the clash between Sofia Borisovna and Alenochkin stems from the fact that, being an ``idealist'' brought up in the rigorous 1920s, she rejects ``good furnishings" which are part of the present way of life? In that case one could challenge Sofia Borisovna on many points. Above all, there is the argument that material well-being is the norm in the life of the Soviet people.
But the rich furnishings in Alenochkin's home do not worry Sofia Borisovna for themselves. They worry her only because they form the meaning of Alenochkin's life, a meaning masked behind right and hign-sounding words. This is what makes people like Alenochkin difficult to pin down.
A carbon copy of Alenochkin is to be found in Vil Lipatov's novel All About Him in the person of Gasilov. Gasilov is a symbol of present-day philistinism, and struggle against it forms the focus of the novel.
Vil Lipatov looks into various forms of social egoism with the attention of a naturalist and the passion of a 165 fighter, offering us ever deeper insights into the psychology of an individualist and philistine today.
What is particularly important is that Lipatov investigates the behaviour of a philistme not only in everyday life but also in the sharp conflicts that occur at work.
Individualism -the product of philistine mentality-is not always openly lunked with lust for gain and greed. The dominant feature of Gorky's Klim Samgin is not moneygrubbing but individualism which erodes his soul. Philistine mentality takes many forms and comprises various elements. It is not only money-grubbing and time-serving, not only careerism, but also vulgarity, cynicism, smug conventionalism, callousness and indifference to other people.
The social type of the modern philistine, embodied in the characters of Alenochkin and Gasilov, has its forerunners in Lipatov' s earlier work. One of his first novellas, The Six, gropes for a character who has been touched by the erosive influence of individualism. He is tractor-driver Gulin who, together with his five comrades, is taking a batch of tractors to a timbering complex deep in the taiga. He has an unfulfilled desire to stand above other people, to dominate and command them. But when his mettle is put to a real test, Gulin breaks. What is the source of his weakness? Is he, perhaps, physically less fit that the other members of his team? Not at all. The thing is that his physical strength is not matched by a sense of responsibility before the team, a sense of social duty. All his lire Gulin has been concerned only about himself.
The same can be said of the mechanic Iziumin in Lipatov's novella Wild Mint.
His motives in work and life are selfish. Enthusiasm, team spirit and social duty are just high-sounding words for him. Which does not prevent nim from making very good use of them in building his career. Iziumin is the same as Alenochkin, the difference between them being that Alenochkin prospers while Iziumin has suffered a setback.
The timberers are unaware that Iziumin is former chief mechanic of the neighbouring timbering complex. Only a short while ago he was regarded as a foremost worker in the region and picked up applause at a conference by his ``brilliant, clever and committed speeches,'' but was then dismissed from his job and expelled from the Party for ``administrative abuses, career-seeking and neglect of the workers' needs. And 166 now he has asked to be given a hard and difficult job in order to atone for his past errors, get restored in the Party and make a fresh start in his career.
And yet they sense something alien and unpleasant in that handsome, strong, efficient and disciplined worker. The man seems to be spreading rust, and this despite all his diligence, discipline and apparent good faith.
For a long time the team-leader, Grigory Semyonovich, cannot find the source of a hostile influence in the team. ``It is an unseen mysterious force, but a force that works at cross-purposes with his own efforts.''
That force is Iziumin's careerist attitudes, his obsession with success and self-assertion. The novella conducts a hard and uncompromising battle on Iziumin's philistine philosophy of life. The author in fact pursues this argument, with varying degrees of success, in all his writings, starting from the early novellas and ending with the novel All About Him.
In tne latter novel Lipatov's favourite theme of opposing Philistinism is leavened with elements of the detective story. Suspense, however, is not an end in itself. It is geared to the task of finding out the social and psychological circumstances which eventually led to the death of the YCL member Evgeny Stoletov.
The testimony of witnesses who are being searchingly questioned by the court investigator Prokhorov form the core of the skilfully woven plot of the novel as we gradually come to understand the character of Evgeny Stoletov, who dies a tragic death, and the circumstances that brought it about. As it turns out these circumstances are not legally actionable, but should be sternly condemned on ethical grounds.
The focus of the novel is the juxtaposition of the characters of Stoletov and Gasilov.
As has been pointed out, Gasilov is a carbon copy of Alenochkin. ``He exuded the casual nonchalance of a person who is very comfortably off.''
The novel explains in detail how Gasilov comes by all his wealth.
Led by Stoletov, the YCL'ers working under Gasilov easily force him into a corner. The conversation is reminiscent of a scene in Black Ravine in which Alenochkin talks to young people sitting on a pile of logs, with the difference that Gasilov, a kindly fatherly man beaming good will sat 167 on a modern sofa in his office. ``Without saying a word, he took Zhenka Stoletov by the hand and with a gentle pull seated him next to himself on the sofa, and motioned Boris Masloy to take a seat on the other side of him. Pyotr Petrovich smelled of something warm and homely, and the large wrinkles on his well-fed face oozed peace and tranquility.'' Gasilov, like his literary forerunner, Alenochkin, tried to suggest by his manner and well-thought-out talk that he was not the kind of man the young people took him for.
But the conversation between the YCL'ers and Gasilov follows a different course from Alenochkin's talk with Maxim Kovalyov and Boris Egorov and it ends on a very different note. While Maxim Kovalyov from Black Ravine has no intention of challenging Alenochkin, and is not prepared for it, Evgeny Stoletov and his friends have come to Gasilov to declare war on him. The YCL'ers tell the famous ``leading worker" Gasilov that they have decided to seek his removal from his post and to combat ``Gasilov methods" to the last. They present facts and figures to support their charges.
T)uring the last ten days we have played at boolc-keeping,'' the YCL'ers tell Gasilov. ``An abacus proved to be very useful and we easily calculated that for three hundred kilometres around there is only one timber site foreman who has been getting monthly bonuses to the tune of his monthly salary over trie past five years.'' He achieved that in a very simple way. ``In your team you have constantly underquoted the average volume of rejects, criminally exaggerated the trailing distance and reduced the number of working days by exaggerating the time it takes to move from one felling area to another. All these crimes are being perpetrated so that you, Comrade Gasilov, could regularly collect maximum bonuses. That is one thing! Second, you need all this cheating in order to save yourself the trouble of managing our team. Everyone in the village knows that you do not spend more than two or three hours a day at the felling area. You deliberately slow down productivity in your team. You are doing that very cleverly, and you know very well that the Party has repeatedly warned us against such sharp fellows.''
These are the charges the YCL'ers level against Gasilov.
This indictment, and even more so, the readiness of Zhenka Stoletov and his friends to challenge Gasilov and everything he stands for, their social commitment and the idea that it takes what Zhenka calls ``civic courage" to combat 168 philistinism as represented by Gasilov-all these make Vil Lipatov's novel relevant and truthful.
Let us recall Black Ravine.
The limitation of that story, noted by critics, lies in the fact that Alenochkin was not challenged by any real social force. Sofia Borisovna, fussy and somewhat pathetic for all her noble impulses, is unable to combat Alenochkin in any meaningful way. And who is? Maxim Kovalyov, as the author makes abundantly clear, is not.
The Alenochkins of our world can only be opposed by a high-minded citizen, committed to public good, responsible for everything that happens around him, an active and courageous champion of truth and his principles. Alenochkin and his like nave mortal fear of such people. The trouble with Vil Lipatov's Black Ravine is that Alenochkin's antipode is a man of limited horizons and not too publicspirited.
Granted, Maxim Kovalyov is a hard-working and diligent engineer. But, alas, he is narrow-minded, as we see from the first pages and through the rest of the narrative. He has little understanding of life and is a poor judge of people. As a citizen, he is at an embryonic stage.
That is why Maxim Kovalyov is unable to fully grasp Alenochkin's character. He regards him as a model Communist and excellent worker. What is evident to Sofia Borisovna, is beyond his understanding.
Maxim Kovalyov never understands his former classmate and co-worker Boris Egorov, a cynical career-seeker. Kovalyov is not a fighter because he does not understand what makes Alenochkin and Egorov tick and does not give himself the trouble to think that they are a social menace. Neither intellectually, nor as a citizen (and these things are interlinked) is he capable of grasping the implications of the phenomena he observes, and his attitude to them is often that of a philistine, not a citizen.
Maxim Kovalyov is a man who feels but not understands the world, to borrow a phrase from Gorky. The young engineer, a captain of industry, does not strike us as a man of keen social perceptions or of well-thought-out civic convictions.
Engineer Maxim Kovalyov was Lipatov's first attempt at portraying an intellectual hero. Previously, an intellectual in nis books is invariably a smugly conventional, career-minded 169 person. He returns to that social type at a new level in The Tale of Director Proncbatov.
Lipatov's approach is bold to the point of being risky: in appearance and manner, the smart and businesslike Pronchatov, who is presented as a hero, reminds us of Alenochkin and Iziumin. Pronchatov, however, has motives that are totally different from the base egoistic motives of Alenochkin and Iziumin.
Pronchatov is deeply committed to the results of the work and he regards it not as his personal but as a public and national concern. Pronchatov, of course, is not a phifistine. He is a citizen. But that side of Pronchatov's nature does not interest the author sufficiently and is rather played down in the story.
Evgeny Stoletov in All About Him is conceived as a character embodying civic commitment. He is a worthy successor to the revolutionary traditions of his grandfather, Egor Semyonovich, a Civil War hero.
The grandfather brought up Zhenya to hate philistines and ``Gasflovism''.
``Why are you so slow, Zhenka? What are you waiting for? Why don't you stand up to Gasilov?" Zhenka replied: ``Granddad, don't you understand that it was easier for you in your day. That one was a Red, another a White, another a green, and another a dotted violet. And Gasilov has no colour.'' For all that, as the ex-convict Zavarzin says about him, Gasilov has found a way ``to exploit Soviet government itself without exploiting man.
Stoletov describes Gasilov as ``a philistine with simple valves'', meaning the elementary nature of his egoistic goals. And yet ``Gasilov attitudes" have considerable appeal and a demoralising effect on people. They are totally devoid of spirituality out their ``modern'' form holds an attraction for spiritually bereft people. When Gasilov's boss, Petukhov, looks at him, says the author, one can read two clear shameless thoughts in his eyes, an admiring ``That's the way to live!" and a grim, determined and almost threatening ``Just you wait. I'll soon live better than you do!''
Such thoughts are indeed easy to read and understand. By contrast, for Stoletov, the meaning of life cannot be reduced to the simple formula ``to know which side one's bread is buttered on''. ``The mystery of Stoletov haunted the ex-convict Zavarzin who could not understand,'' writes Lipatov, 170 ``that one could and had to live differently than grazing in the green and gay pastures of life; it did not occur to him that there exists a greater force in the world than money, prestige, love of comfort, and caviar.''
Evgeny Stoletov, who comes across as an heir to his ``revolutionary grandfather'', embodies that noble force of our time. He is conceived as a heroic character. During the last war such boys as Evgeny Stoletov hurled themselves against enemy foxholes. Evgeny did not hurl himself against a foxhole. He died fighting pnilistinism which to him was focussed on Gasilov and everything he stood for.
In terms of the real social forces which stand behind Evgeny Stoletov and which his character symbolises, the author is undoubtedly right. The way Stoletov is conceived by the author, he is a genuine hero of our time.
Our literature has its eyes trained on such characters which express the leading type of our age and reveal themselves in work for the common good and in the struggle for communism.
[171] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Six __ALPHA_LVL1__ Man and His Work __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1The scientific and technological revolution is considered to be the sign of our time. The drastic social and economic changes characteristic of advanced socialism, coupled with revolutionary scientific and technological achievements, lead to fundamental changes in the social, material, moral and psychological aspects of life, in human characters and relations and in the very tenor of everyday reality. The scientific and technological revolution in this country is a key instrument in the building of the material and technical base of communism and the STR under socialism serves the nation, society and the individual.
The consequences of the scientific and technological revolution in the world of capitalism are the subject of Player Piano by the well-known American writer Kurt Vonnegut. It is a science fiction satirical novel about a world in which machines provide for people. In a society which, with an oblique reference to the present-day USA, is depicted in Player Piano, automatons and machines are developed to a degree that makes mankind superfluous. Man is being fed, clothed, and otherwise kept in shape. But what is the purpose of his life? Man's life has been robbed of its meaning because technocratic progress has left no room for man's creative activity. And so a handful of rebels against the technocrats and machines promise to restore the sense of involvement, a feeling that one is needed on this Earth, a sense of dignity.
In a society described by Kurt Vonnegut, which in the West is often referred to as ``industrial'', ``post-industrial'' and ``technotronic'', there is mounting fear in the face of the ``deamonic technology" which, in the context of bourgeois 172 social relations, standardises man and deprives him of individuality, severs his links with nature and destroys the humanistic traditions of society. The STR inspires fear, nor reassurance; far from curing capitalism's chronic ills, it aggravates them to the limit. In the moral sphere, it brings inhumanity to its extreme.
One could glean an idea of what it all means in practice from the testimony of the West German journalist and author Giinter Wallraff, who became employed as a worker at Fichtel and Sachs factory under an assumed name and set down his impressions in a reportage called A/ the Mercy of the Moloch. Giinter Wallraff himself experienced the latest American system of management and technology and arrived at the conclusion that the system ``reduces man to the level of a robot''. This is an offshoot of ``efficiency'' if it is geared to the task of boosting capitalist profits.
Is it true, then, that the ``Golden Age" of mankind is in the past, and not in the future?
In answering that question one must proceed from a clear social frame of reference and take a dialectical approach in the study of the interplay between the social and scientific-technological processes.
The ideal communist society combines rapid and revolutionary growth of productive forces and consistent public concern about harmonious development of the individual in the socialist mould. Advanced socialism and the scientific and technological revolution, far from downgrading the role of the working class in our society, merely reveal it to a greater extent. The modern worker has become a technologically educated person who increasingly combines work by hand and work by brain. Today his educational and professional standards are growing more rapidly than ever, and so are his social and political activity.
What are the new features that developed socialism and scientific and technological revolution foster in the modern worker? More broadly, what new problems are put on the agenda by the accelerated scientific and technological progress in the context of socialism? What, for example, is the effect of the scientific and technological revolution on the morality of the present-day hero engaged in a modern national economy?
These are questions that do not lend themselves easily to artistic study. It is a matter for regret that writers do 173 not often delight us which successful and talented books about the novel features introduced by the rapid scientific and technological progress. And yet the few books that touch upon this set of problems merit our attention if only because their authors are venturing into largely unknown territory. These ventures reveal the prospects for further search and show the snags that lie in store for the writer in this difficult field.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2Present-day Soviet literature taken as a whole seeks to portray our time in all its concreteness and development.
The Soviet prose-writer Vsevplqd Ivanov wrote in his notebooks: ``What is the distinguishing feature of our time? Apparently it is the special attention paid to the working man and the way he works. Racher, the attention paid to those who work well-or extra well-and who know how to work.''
Such people are shown in Azhayev's Far from Moscow, Panova's Kruzhilikha, Nikolayeva's Bittle on the Road, Konovalov's Sources, Kozhevnikov's Meet Baluyev and Trifpnov's Quenching of Thirst, Granin's Heading for the Storm, Vladimov's Big Ore, Lipatov's Tale of Director Pronchatov and AH About Him, Rekemchuk's Barren Continent, Voronov's Youth in Zheleznodolsk and Popov's sequence of novels about the working class.
The rapid pace of modern life is due in large part to scientific and technological progress which under socialism is a powerful lever for building the material and technical base of communism.
While it is true that the scientific and technological revolution manifests itself differently in different social systems-capitalism and socialism-it faces society with many acute problems even under a planned socialist economy. Think of the complex dialectic relationship STR-Man-Nature. Literature is callea upon to analyse the social and psychological aspects of the scientific and technological revolution. But in doing so it should bear in mind that all. these problems can only be solved if scientific and technological achievements are fused with the advantages offered by the socialist system.
174A close look at the writing of authors who have in recent years and decades tried to understand the leading character of our time (say, Kozhevnikov's Meet Baluyev, Granin's Heading for the Storm, Trifonov's Quenching of Thirst and Vladimov's Big Ore) shows that the conflicts in these books have to do less with production than with social and moral aspects. It looks as if this trend in Soviet literature is going to grow.
Scientific and technological progress puts a higher premium on intellect, education and efficiency. But it also increases the value of moral qualities that are manifested in social life-integrity, humanity, civic courage, consciousness and commitment, and the qualities that help to promote social and scientific-technological progress.
Daniil Granin's novel Heading for the Storm turns the spot-light on the mysterious and romantic world of modern physics-a world of bold search and discoveries. That world is an arena of a conflict between genuine scientists and noble people, such as Dan and Krylov, and the careerseekers, philistines and mediocrities such as Denisov, Agatov and Lagunov. These people-Denisov and Lagunov-have brought about the death of the genius Dan by their constant baiting. Dan challenged Academician Denisov who came up with a publicity-seeking project of destroying clouds with the help of shells. He proved the absurdity of Denisov's claims to be able to solve the problem in that way (Denisov, incidentally, had become an Academician largely because from time to time he launched such widely-publicised projects which promised immediate blessings to mankind). Academician Dankeyich, called affectionately Dan by friends, debunked that piece of scientific demagoguery, which earned him the label of an advocate of ``pure science" allegedly opposing ``links'' between science and industry.
Denisov, Agatov and Lagunov are mediocre, jealous people incapable of creative work, and they seek, by hook or by croolc, to climb up the administrative ladder in the scientific establishment. In pursuit of their petty selfish aims, they, nearly wreck the research project of Tulin and Krylov who try to find an effective way of destroying thunderclouds. To cover up their wicked plans, one of them, Agatov, even committed a crime: he caused the death in an air crash of the young post-graduate scientist Richard Goldin 175 whom he had stunned and left to die on board a plane caught in a thunderstorm.
Agatov, Denisov and Lagunov have much in common with Vil Lipatov's Alenochkin, notably their predatory attitude to life skilfully disguised by social demagogy.
But the main tension in trie novel comes not from the head-on clash between the forces of good and evil. It comes from the juxtaposition of the characters of two friends, the
a' sicists Krylov and Tulin, and the tacit argument they long been pursuing without being aware of it. Krylov worships Tulin, who is a wizard at getting things done, a brilliant scientist, an efficient and sociable man of utter self-confidence.
``Wherever Tulin went, he always had fair wind, taxis beckoned him with their green lights, girls smiled to him and men envied him.'' His good luck and self-confidence are well-grounded: he can do a lot of things, he can do almost anything, or so he thinks, and so do the others think. He treats with condescending tenderness his former class-mate Krylov, a clumsy, unpractical and slow-thinking man. Tulin is resigned to the role of guardian for that awkward fellow, a crackpot as he was nicknamed at a factory where he landed after being expelled from university for truancy. Krylov takes all this for granted because, like many, he is very fond of Tulin. And yet he would not go back on his principles even for the sake of Tulin, who wants him to stay at the research institute of old Professor Golitsyn, who sets obstacles in the way of Tulin's work and is regarded as a retrograde by Krylov. Tulin wants to have Krylov at Golitsyn s institute as his own man in the enemy camp. He unlooses all his irony and biting sarcasm on Krylov (``Who benefits from your playing a Don Quixote, you just spoil the game for everyone! ) and suddenly becomes aware of being up against ``something unyielding and hard as a bone".
``What is the point of working with Golitsyn if I disagree with him and you also disagree with him? To give you up? But that means to give up myself. If I have convictions I must stand up for them, and if I haven't been successful, I'd rather leave than strike a deal.''
And he leaves, spurning Golitsyn's offer of a post of laboratory chief.
``If I have convictions, I must stand up for them'', this 176 is the core of Krylov's character, the ``something hard" against which Tulin would come up again and again. As the story unfolds, the fundamental difference of the attitudes of Tulin and Krylov to life and science is starkly revealed.
Krylov is a man of principle, a man of integrity. He cannot lie in small ways or large. His striving for truth and honesty has developed into something larger-into commitment to his civic and scientific principles. Betraying these principles and convictions is an unnatural and impossible act for him. It is an outrage against his conscience.
Krylov realised that after his involuntary betrayal of Dan when, under the influence of Lagunov, he despaired that the great scientist's search would ever bring results, and went on a year-long voyage around the world aboard the research vessel Vityaz. While he was away Dan had died, his opponents had triumphed and were now nothing loath to take on Dan's favourite pupil who had left him at a crucial moment. He cannot act like Tulin, who, for the sake of expediency, bows to his enemy, Academician Denisov: ``We must save the project, understand? I could mortgage my soul to the devil himself if only the project could go on. According to Tulin, the Denisovs, Lagunovs and Agatovs of this world should be ``combated by their own methods. A la guerre comme a la guerre. To lie? All right, I'll lie. We can wash our hands afterwards".
Tulin and Krylov were allies. But Krylov could not accept such ``ground rules''. He could not forfeit his integrity even for the sake of truth. He listened to Tulin s reproaches of being ``inflexible'', ``self-righteous'' and ``quixotic'' but remained himself. ``Some things are more powerful than any science and logic,'' he told Tulin. With him conscience was more powerful than science and logic. He was convinced that it was his uncompromising conscience that had made Dan a ``real scientist": ``He would never go back on his convictions. He would stubbornly repeat luce Galileo, 'but it does move'. A genuine scientist cannot behave otherwise. Come what may!" He cannot forget Dan's last words addressed to him, ``So you don't believe?''
Krylov left Dan, not because the latter had suffered a defeat. It was just that at some point he had ceased to believe that Dan was on the right track. He did not believe, but Dan proved he was right. And that unwitting act of treachery, which was hailed by Tulin as a wise and sober __PRINTERS_P_178_COMMENT__ 7---835 177 act, turned out to be disastrous for the young scientist in moral terms.
``He who does not believe, will not achieve anything. One must have the ability to believe. One must dare believe.'' Eventually Krylov proved that he had both the capacity and daring to believe. He was able to stand up for his views without compromising his principles or his conscience.
The clash between Krylov and Tulin, between a man of principle and an opportunist, reveals that the moral basis of scientific achievement is uncompromising quest of truth. Dan was a great scientist because ``he was above all a real man''. ``To be a real man, a real man above all'', this is what Krylov strives for. Krylqv's honest and courageous behaviour and steadfast commitment to the pursuit of scientific truth is a touchstone on which the moral strength of the other characters in the novel is tried. ``I've neglected myself as a personality,'' thinks Krylov's opponent, General Yuzhin, watching the passion and determination with which Krylov is upholding his views. Yuzhin used to be noted for his bravery in the army. But now he realised that courage at war was quite different from civic courage, and that he, a brave general, might do well to borrow some civic courage from Krylov.
Like Dankevich, Krylov is a genuine and dedicated scientist. Like Dankevich, he is a man of the future. Loyalty to his convictions and principles and integrity are part of his nature. They give him strength, and make him immeasurably superior to Tulin, as becomes evident at the time of real trial.
The crash of a plane as a result of flights through thunderstorms, and the death of Richard enabled Tulin s opponents, Agatov and Lagunov, who headed an inquiry into the crash, to have the research programme shelved. The magician Tulin was prostrate. He had no courage to defend his idea. He betrayed it. And that betrayal revealed Tulin's opportunism and his weakness as a personality. It showed that for Tulin success and not truth were the main thing. That throws a revealing sidelight on his high-sounding declarations that he would spare nothing for the success of the project: ``I won't spare anyone. I would sacrifice anyone.'' At last we are able to penetrate behind the camouflage, the perhaps unconscious pose of a man who would sacrifice himself (and anyone) for the cause and the idea, to 178 the real Tulin, a talented, educated, and energetic egotist. ``Only thinks about himself, about himself alone. Everything and everyone are for him. It's not Richard's death that worries him, it's the trouble it spells for him,'' thinks Zhenya, who is in love with Tulin.
Tulin's egotism manifested itself earlier, for example in the cynicism which he affected and which went deeper than Krylov had thought. It came to the surface when Tulin's hopes of gaining fame were dashed. Krylov then realised that Tulin was not all that much different from Agatov and Lagunov. Why so? Krylov attributed Agatov and Lagunov's depraved behaviour to their being mediocrities. If Tulin had been a mediocrity, reflects Krylov, his behaviour would have been easy to explain. But Tulin is talented, so why does he need success, recognition and all that nonsense coveted by Agatovs and Lagunovs? Why should such a person become a scoundrel?
Tulin is talented beyond a shadow of a doubt. As Krylov continued to work on the theme-undaunted by Tulin's treachery and the commission's decision-he realised how close Tulin had been to the solution. Although he was at times short on thoroughness and argumentation, ``he possessed an exceptional intuition, a kind of inner vision''. And yet Tulin did not have it in him to become a great scientist, and in this lies his tragedy. He was a ``scoundrel'', thought only about himself and was capable of wicked and treacherous acts.
Tulin's fate convinces Krylov that talent alone is not a safeguard against ``skullduggery''. Agatov and Lagunov are scoundrels because they lack talent. Their wickedness is the result of their philistine philosophy of life. Tulin is talented, but he turns out to be a scoundrel for the same reason. The philosophy of life he preaches is, when all is said and done, not public-minded but narrowly egoistic. His driving motive is success. Tulin is a personality of small stature compared with Krylov, who is least of all concerned with personal success and is engrossed in his work and the search for truth, hoping that the scientific truth he would discover would benefit the nation. Tulin is aware of that, which accounts for the ferocity with which he attacks Krylov who has decided to carry on Tulin's work.
``'You are the righteous person, so keep on trying. But you won't get very far with your moral code. Tell me, 179 what is the use of being good if good people always go under? They are always on the short end of things. Now, you are following your moral rules, but what is the result? what have you achieved? You are just making it easier for the scoundrels to gain the upper hand.'
``'But I never compromise.'
``'Our whole life is a compromise,' said Tulin. 'We can never be honest to the end and do what we like.'
``'I don't know what use it is to be good. And what is the use of being a man? You've been born a human being, so live like a human being and not like a caterpillar. 1 don't know, perhaps you should be good for your own sake, perhaps for the sake of others. I do not give up struggle, but I will fight honestly, and if I start cheating then I should be fighting, not against scoundrels, but for a place among them.'"
This is Kryloy's philosophy. He is indeed a ``righteous'' man, a man of impeccable morality, the new man of our time, noble and strong of spirit. The Krylov characterprincipled, unyielding, engrossed in his cause and not himself, and his sterling moral purity-all these qualities have their sources somewhere in the 20s and 30s. Krylov is a modern heir of the teacher Duishen, Venka Malyshev and Pravdokha, and'of the young men who fought in the last war.
Krylov's story makes it clear that the struggle against selfishness and social egoism is still hard. One should not underestimate the difficulties of that struggle if one is to avoid disappointment.
Krylov's will and endurance were taxed to the limit in opposing the world of Agatov and Denisov and yet he came out on top in that struggle and did not cave in, like Tulin. The central episode ofthe novel shows a meeting of a high government commission led by General Yuzhin charged with investigating into the causes of the plane crash and deciding whether the experiments of the young physicists should go on. General Yuzhin, formerly a brave air force general who led squadrons of heavy bombers to Berlin, is faced with a difficult moral choice: to cancel the project, which would be less troublesome and which, all the circumstances seem to suggest, is the right decision, or to allow Krylov to go on and thus assume the burden of responsibility. Yuzhin hesitates.
``Well, General,'' says Krylov with ill-disguised contempt. 180 ``Your chest is covered with war decorations. You fought bravely at the front. Here there's no shooting!''
These words stirred Yuzhin's soul and made him understand that courage in peacetime life was for him more difficult to achieve than at the front.
Civic courage in such confrontations is at times taxed heavily. And it is the duty of literature to prepare the young for acts of civic heroism. Being true to one's principles and convictions, being an honest citizen is by no means simple. It is not a decoration or a mark of distinction, it is arduous service to an idea, duty and one's conscience, which in the final analysis means service to society and the people. That road is arduous and there is little promise of a calm and comfortable life, but it is the only way to stay a real man.
That is why the young should have first-hand knowledge of life. An education that is based on wishful thinking and presents life as an idyll, a garden of Eden in which one should merely pick the fruits, may make some young people feel disenchanted, sceptical and dispirited. Confronted with reality, they begin to accuse the whole world. Starry-eyed idealists quickly turn into whiners and occasionally cynics. The reason is more often than not a weak civic consciousness, lack of accurate knowledge about the difficulties and contradictions of real life, failure to grasp the nature of these difficulties and take a courageous stand.
That is why ideological commitment in the true Leninist sense of the word is so important for the education of the young. That commitment should foster in the young souls a contempt of material gain, a thirst for genuine spiritual values and lofty civic convictions. The more material comforts our life offers, the more we should respect genuine human values. It is a nagging anxiety that some young people replace genuine human values with the surrogate values of material gain, and worship of things. Possession of creature comforts and expensive and fashionable goods ``is only justified when it is a by-product of great effort in some other field of activity'', writes the dramatist Rozov. ``Let me elaborate. Supposing a young man is keen on mathematics, which is his vocation and forms the meaning of his life. He does good work in his chosen field, gains recognition and good pay for his work; now, when such a man surrounds himself with valuable expensive things it 181 does not strike you as vulgar because to him they are not the main thing. But if in his youth the same young man had directed his intellectual, spiritual and even physical energy, not to science but to getting fashionable things-because they are symbols of success-then I am sure that he would not have become a genuine scientist but at best a man who has made science a source of profit... I want every man to be well off, but one cannot tolerate it when the chase of material benefits becomes the meaning of life. That is absurd and ridiculous.''
If one seeks to be an honest citizen one must be uncompromising in carrying on the struggle of our fathers for the triumph of communist revolutionary ideals.
Tnis struggle is being waged in everyday life and at work, the battlefield most often being me factory floor, a research laboratory, or a collective farm. Under socialism, man is measured above all by his work and his behaviour in his chosen field of activity. It is through his work, provided it is meaningful and useful to people and the nation, that man gets a sense of meaning and identity and overcomes alienation from people and society. Man leaves behind him the results of his work.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 3``Work is the basis of new morality.'' The truth of these words cannot be challenged. But is every kind of work conducive to new morality?
Academician Nesmeyanov, a prominent Soviet scientist, had this to say in an interview to Literaturnaya gazeta: ``Not only different societies, but different people have different morality. A merchant respected in capitalist society would be considered an exploiter and profiteer in this country.''
It is an elementary truth, but sometimes to understand a problem fully it is useful to go back to the ABC, even at the risk of being accused of rehearsing elementary truths.
Literaturnaya gazeta once published a letter from a young Canadian, Irving Lazar, to Yuri Gagarin.
``What would you advise to a fifteen-year-old who is at a crossroads and is facing an important decision?" Irving Lazar asked the world's first cosmonaut. ``At such a time 182 I would very much like to benefit by the advice of an experienced man who lives in a new country.
``My first question is this:
``If it is in your personal interest to lie (let us suppose that such a situation arises) should you lie contrary to principles or should you tell the truth?
``Further. It seems there are more able people than opportunities for them to reveal their abilities. The conclusion suggests itself that to achieve success you must 'cut anothers throat'. Do you think that is true, and if so, do you think it is just?
``Finally, do you think you can succeed if you set yourself a goal and work steadily or does it also call for luck?
``I hate to be trespassing on your time, but I would also like to know what, in your opinion, is success?''
Here is what Yuri Gagarin replied:
``My young Canadian friend!
``I have thought a great deal over your letter. It is good that you ask yourself such serious questions. I think your life will depend greatly on how you answer these questions.
``You may know that in my country people address each other as 'comrade'. Since childhood I have been accustomed to being surrounded by comrades and friends. I joined the Young Pioneers when I was eight. We practised sports, went on cross-country rambles, slept in tents in the forest and learnt to lit camp-fires with a single match. One of the things I understood then was the need for comradeship. As years went by I joined the youth organisation, the Young Communist League, and then the Communist Party. In these organisations too, comradeship is the main principle.
``I made thi's introduction, Irving, so that you could better understand my answers.
``You are asking whether one should lie if personal interests demand it. No, Irving, I think you should be honest and always say what you really think. Then you would respect yourself and earn the respect of others. I think to be a brave and strong man you must be truthful. He who lies can never be a real friend, you could never trust him. If I ever go in a rocket to outer space together with someone, my mate will be a man who would never lie for personal benefit.
My answer to the second question is also negative, Irving. It is not true that there are more able people 183 than there are opportunities for them to reveal their abilities. At least that is not the case in my country. We judge a person by his initiative and the energy he brings to his work. I think the main thing in every job is a creative approach, and the ability to introduce something new in it.
``As regards 'cutting another's throat', if that were to be the case, then the winner would always be someone who has stronger fists or more money. But in that case, of course, good places would be occupied by people who do not deserve it,
``I believe in luck, Irving, as I also believe in reasonable risk. Fortune will be on the side of those who work hard towards their goal.
``I would like to make two points, however. The goal you set before yourself should be worth working for. And second, there must be comrades around you. They will help you if you suddenly feel dispirited and are tempted to give upj your goal. They will share with you the joy of your triumph, for if you are alone, no amount of success could make you happy.''
iMorality is worked out in the process of work, and determined by the social quality of laoour and what stimulates it.
The new socialist morality and mentality, which are to evolve onto communist morality and mentality, stem from the fundamentally new social and economic relations among people. The new ethos is not only conditioned by the new quality of labour, but is chiefly manifested in the process of work, and in turn, influences this process.
That is why the conflict between old and new morality is above all manifested in work. Man and his work is a subject that has to do not only with production relations, but with the ethical aspects of relations under socialism which highlight the moral conflicts of contemporary society. The attitude to work-honest or dishonest, selfish or unselfish, creative or bureaucratic-reveals the main principles that guide a person, his spirituality or lack of it, and nis philosophy of life and sense of identity.
As has been noted above, present-day literature is sensitive to the dialectical association between the sphere of labour and social ethos, and the conflicts it shows are most often set in the production sphere.
184One should be careful not to make that conclusion too sweeping, for that would make our literature seem poorer than it is. Many talented contemporary works are using the material of everyday and personal relations to wage a battle for the new man, against petty-bourgeois egoism, nidebound attitudes and inhumanity. And that does not make it secondrate literature, for the struggle for a new man is and will continue to be waged on the broadest front covering all the diverse manifestations of the human soul.
Even so, more and more books are prompted by the ethical conflicts occurring in the process of labour. The conception of work as an aesthetic and ethical category is the great gain of the literature of socialist realism. Leonid Leonov in nis time wrote in a perhaps too categorical manner that ``the hero of the 19th century literature for the most part was not involved in labour processes. Today the hero of Soviet literature is a worker wnose profession links him like a drive belt with his time''. Leonov regarded that as an innovation of Soviet literature and justly launched this call: ``Today's writer should follow his hero to the workshop, the laboratory and the state farm. And he would need an intimate knowledge of the hero's profession if he is to understand his attitude to a particular phenomenon of life.''
Unfortunately, for a long time our writers paid too much attention to the technical aspects of work without due penetration into its psychological and ethical aspects. They came up with books that were not so much about people with different characters as about different professions.
Yuri Trifonov's novel Quenching of Thirst has some inspired pages about the heroic behaviour of masses of people, for example the builders combatting the water that broke through a dam. But the writer's main concern is to identify the ethical and psychological qualities of people that have made such mass heroism possible.
The originality of Trifonov's novel lies in its close attention to the spiritual and moral world of the people who are conquering the desert, and the ethical and psychological conflicts of their work.
We get a sweeping panorama of a large construction project, a project that is ``vast, larger than old age, the partings and illnesses and all the other things that an individual experiences''. We see the people dedicated to that cause, today's ``Bolsheviks of the desert and the spring" 185 (Vladimir Lugovskoi) who are giving everything they have to the project-their health, brains and soul.
Some of the characters are drawn in bold relief ( Karabash), some are sketchy (Yermasov and Jegers) and others are barely outlined (Beki Essenov), but there are no contrived characters.
``If there is no cause that you love, that is larger than you are, larger than your joys and larger than your sorrows, then life has no meaning. These words are uttered by Yermasov, but Karabash, Gokhberg, Martin Jegers and many other characters in the book might well subscribe to them.
Such a cause cannot be egoistic. It can only be a cause in the name of people. Only then can it be larger than personal joys and misfortunes, only then is it worth devoting one's life to.
The construction project is such a cause for Yermasov and Karabash.
``We argue, quarrel, trample upon and insult each other. Petty jealousies are rife, and we suffer and perpetrate injustices, and err, and what not, but the channel is building, and water is moving westward, slowly but steadily. In spite of anything. And this makes life worth living.''
But what do the characters in Quenching of Thirst quarrel about? Yermasov is not exaggerating, for the project is indeed an arena of daily conflict.
How best to build the canal, from one end, as envisaged by the project, or from both ends simultaneously? Yermasov, an experienced irrigation expert who heads the project, decides to take a chance and alter the plan of construction. He suggests what has come to be known as a ``Yermasov raid'', a plan whereby technology would be taken into the heart of the desert to start digging the canal from both ends at once.
What is the best way to dig, by scrapers or bulldozers? This too is a cause for furious arguments among builders. They argue until their voices are hoarse and sometimes become personal enemies over these issues. But are these the only issues?
The conflict in Quenching of Thirst deals with technical matters, but at the same time it involves moral questions. The questions are nothing less than how one should live and for the sake of what.
186Yermasov and Karabash, as befits Communists, champion an honest approach to their task. They are men of principle and creative thinking, totally dedicated to this taslc. They do not seek personal success, and are concerned with the rate and quality of construction. They are collective-minded, totally unselfish people. Their enemies, the career-seeker Khorev and the stuffed-shirt bureaucrat Luzgin, place personal well-being above the interests of the project and of society. Hence their opportunism, lack of commitment and careerism. They are time servers and philistines who cleverly mask their egoism by high-sounding words. They can serve and be subservient, but they cannot work. Luzgin and Khorev are wary of creative and forward-looking people like Karabash and Yermasov. They resent such peopFe. The writer notes quite rightly that the foot causes of the enmity between Yermasov and Khorev and his like ``were far deeper" than it appeared: ``They reflected the struggle and change that was taking place everywhere, sometimes openly, but for the most part in a disguised, hidden, even unconscious form. People argued about gradients, dams and technicalities, while in fact the arguments were about the nature of the present epoch.''
The writer is also right in showing that it was a difficult struggle for Yermasov and Karabash despite the fact that time was on their side. Why so?
Because Khorev and Luzgin are linked by thousands of invisible threads with the pnilistine, selfish, opportunist aspects of people's nature, with all that represents the ideology of contemporary philistinism, and ideology hostile to Yermasov and Karabash and near and dear to Khorev and Luzgin.
The narrow-minded Sasha Zubarov is against innovation at the construction site not because his wire Lera has fallen in love with Karabash. His lust for gain attracts him to Khorev and Luzgin. He is very susceptible to their example and behaviour in everyday life. ``The main thing is to stop thrashing about.'' To stop thinking about anything or anyone except himself. He is convinced that this is the way everyone lives. ``Everyone is seeking something for himself... Khorev who is today reporting on Yermasov also has an axe to grind.'' And Zubarov who together with Khorev is reporting on Yermasov, Karabash and Gokhberg ``is also seeking something for himself'', ``is 187 pursuing his own aims''. This in his view is what life is all about.
Such people have a wonderful rapport with one another. They try to cheat their time by social mimicry and by bailing each other out. The bureaucrat Luzgin has the support of Zubarov in his editorial office, at the construction site his ``crony'' is Khorev and at the Water Resources Authority, the time server Niyazdurdyev. These people have in common a philistine predatory attitude to life. That is why for Yermasov and Karabash they are not only personal but social and ideological enemies. The hearts of men and women are the battlefields of today. The whirlwind of that struggle is everywhere: at the construction site, at the editorial office, at the Water Resources Authority and in the Tajik village where a building worker and YCL member, Biashim Muradov, has been murdered.
``The war of these shopkeepers against Biashim Muradov is the war between the desert and the canal... They hated Biashim. They hated the canal which was bringing not only water but a different life to the desert.''
The battle between the desert and the canal involves not only the slaying of Biashim Muradov. It is also the careerism and stifling bureaucracy of Khorev, the petty opportunism of Zubarov and the greed that has eroded the soul of the excavator man Nagayev.
The ``famous'' excavator man Nagayev is one of the most vivid characters in the novel showing with great force the corruptive power of greed and lust for gain.
It is a flesh-and-blood character that is not unsympathetic. He is sincerely in love with his Marina whom he rescues from a blizzard risking his own life. She was just the right kind of woman for Nagayev, ``tall, broad-shouldered, with a simple sun-beaten face , strong, primitive and naive and kindly. But even she finds Nagayev's behaviour too much. Nagayev enjoys a well-deserved fame. He does exceed the daily production quota regularly, and he is an ``ace'', a topnotch worker.
But what motivates him? What makes him put in ten or twelve-hour shifts in the tunnel in biting cold or scorching heat, and be the first to mount his excavator and the last to leave it?
``He could not bear to sit calmly while someone in the tunnel was doing 'cubic metres'. It seemed to him that 188 others were outstripping him, beating him to it, although in fact neither the three machine-operators nor, for that matter, anyone in the team earned anywhere nearly as much as Nagayev.''
Money was the main stimulus of Nagayev's labour exploits. In search of money he travelled the length and breadth of the whole country from Murmansk to Siberia, working as a lumberjack, a carpenter, a tractor driver, a lorry driver and, finally, as an excavator operator.
``'I for one know how to live. What's the greatest force in life? It is this,'' and he raised a hand and rubbed two fingers with his thumb. `You take my word for it.':
It is symptomatic of the prevailing attitudes of our time that Nagayev's naive and undisguised lust for gain arouses revulsion among his comrades.
Nagayev is a pet of Khorev, for whom his ``performance'' is important. Zubarov is writing him up in his paper. But he is not popular with the workers. ``You don't care about the project, you don't care about other people, all you care about are your own interests!" Beki Essenov shouts at him. Nagayev is disliked on account of his greed and money-grubbing. ``He's stingy'', ``would die for an extra kopeck , the workers say about him.
So, he is a convinced money-grubber, a ``close-fisted'' go-getter in the guise of an ``advanced worker''. One is surprised therefore to see the inner turmoil and pain with which he leaves the team, rejected by his beloved and his fellow-workers. At a critical moment when water is breaking through the dams Nagayev, instead of joining his fellows in fighting the water, is interested to find out whether he would be paid for overtime.
``'Damned money-grubber. You scamp, get out of here!'~"
``People were saying that angrily to his face. Nagayev looked into the furious eyes of his former mates, those who had respected him, heeded his advice, borrowed money from him, and envied him ... and he felt that they would not spare him. His heart beat fast, and he felt that he should repent, prostrate and humiliate himself and shout desperately, 'Mates, I'm ready to join you at any moment. I don't need money. I'm not so wicked as not to understand what is happening. It was a slip of the tongue. I said it out of stupidity and greed. I didn't really mean it!' And that was 189 true, and he was screaming it inwardly, straining his lungs, but soundlessly, so that no one heard him. Instead he bit his lip and said,
``~`Ah, to hell with you.'~"
And so he left the team, generally despised, and feeling a sudden pang of regret.
What made him, after loitering about and spending all his money, return to the place from which he had been turned out with disgrace, and not only repent but accept the humble job of a fitter at a workshop? ``It was humiliating, but he agreed. He wanted to be the first to move 50,000 cubic metres of earth in one shift in his excavator. And he felt there was something else he wanted to prove.'' What?
Granted, Semyon Nagayev, the ``ace'' excavator operator, who fulfils the quota several times over for the sake of money, is a grubber. That is a fact that stares you in the face. But why then do we feel so anxious and hopeful that he would after all ``prove'' something?
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 4Recent Soviet literature has been probing ever deeper into the complex ethical problems of our time and has looked ever keener into the spiritual conflicts which manifest themselves in various spheres of social life.
The heroic character of our time is revealed in the principled and tireless struggle for the communist ideal and the interests of the people. Commitment to communist ideas is the main feature of that character.
This is the attitude of the Communist Party member Konkin, chairman of the village council in Vladimir Fomenko's novel The Memory of Soil. The appeal of that character comes from his idealism, quest for truth, integrity and loyalty to principles.
Village council chairman is not much of a post in the hamlet of Korenovsky. However, the village council has become the most lively place in the hamlet and Konkin the most popular leader, a true representative of local Soviet government. It so happened that the council under Konkin's leadership had become a place where people sought advice on community and private matters. There was something 190 about Konkin that made one think of ``a man in 1919, .1 farm labourer of the day before yesterday and Red Guard fighter of yesterday, who was put at the head of a mighty power and never ceased to marvel what a wonderful thing ft was that the workers were themselves ordering their life''.
He is not an easy man to deal with: impulsive, argumentative and reckless. He is one of those people whose unyielding uprightness causes a lot of trouble. But Konkin attracts people and commands respect because his difficult character is the result of his profoundand uncompromising commitment to communist ideals and inexhaustible love for his fellow-men.
The author shows the Cossack hamlet of Korenovsky at a critical moment. The centuries-old village is to be demolished for the construction of a giant lake. The inhabitants are to be resettled. The situation is laden with drama. The conflict between the social and private interests is apparent: the farmers are being asked to give up the things they cherish most for the sake of public interest, so that the nation could have more electric energy and more irrigated land. While the benefits from resettlement appear to them to be vague and remote, the sacrifice is real and tangible. In this situation, human characters open up. For a few days the inhabitants of Korenovsky change completely. Some become stronger, as if yesterday's iron has been tempered into steel; others wilt; yet others shed their ``social consciousness" like an old coat.
The author shows that resettlement was a test not only for the leaders, notably the young district Party Secretary Golikov and the chairman of the district Soviet, Orlov. They are charged with the task of organising the people and providing leadership at that difficult moment.
Orlov is the antipode of Konkin. Although these two people hardly ever meet in the novel, they are engaged in a never-ending tacit argument about fundamental things.
Orlov is an ambitious and able man who believes that he deserves a higher administrative office, and he looks upon his rather humble post in the district as temporary, as a launching pad to higher posts at the regional level. His aim is to acquit himself well at this low-level job in order to be promoted to a regional job that does justice 191 to his ability. What marks Orlov's style of leadership in the district is profound indifference to the needs and aspirations of the people he is to lead, even though his declarations are impeccably correct. The more the Party Secretary Golikov knew Orlov, the more he realised that Orlov's main motive was to see to it that the district is regarded as ``good'' by the higher authorities.
What is it that separates Orlov from Konkin and Golikov and in fact from all the collective farmers? His wrong administrative methods? And what lies behind them?
Orlov could go along with the view that the collective farmers are masters of their land, but all the same, he believes, masters, ``be they in factory overalls or in farmers' wadded jacket, should be guided''. While he accepted the declarations about the people as master of its destiny in the old Communist Youth League songs and in books, in his practical work he did not apply the ideas of these books believing that ``too much democracy is harmful just as excessive amounts of sugar are harmful to a human organism".
By contrast, Golikov and Konkin are convinced that the people in factory overalls and farmers' wadded jackets must be and feel themselves to be genuine masters of their lives and that one cannot disregard ``their life and the creative impulses coming from the rank-and-file''. They think it is the only possible approach if their level of consciousness and ``spiritual potential" are to be enhanced.
Fomenko's novel shows how collective farmers gradually come to acquire a sense of responsibility, how they jointly decide their own destiny and are freed of that most insidious disease of the soul, indifference.
The writer traces the emerging signs of a hew civic attitude among collective farmers which replaces the moral atmosphere imposed in the district by Orlov.
It is not surprising that Orlov's words that the settlers, who had believed the district Party Secretary's word of honour, should be ``kicked out. All of them, together with their belief!" appear to Golikov and Konkin to be ``worse than murder''. Golikov explains to Orlov: ``Someone killed by an enemy bullet defending his Motherland is dead and has an aura of glory about him. But someone evicted by your methods has been spiritually raped. He won't become 192 an enemy, but he has already been corrupted and will from now on five by a double standard.''
These reflections of Golikov and the youthful zest of Konkin, which he has preserved since the time of the Revolution and Civil War, and his faith in the spiritual potential of the working man all bespeak people in the Leninist mould.
The Memory of Soil is a major phenomenon in recent Soviet prose because it argues potently that the self-awareness and initiative of the rank-and-file worker and his sense of being master of his land is the main condition for the growth of spiritual potential, an idea that is central to the question of man's values today.
The same set of problems forms the focus of Boris Mozhayev's novella Alive and a book of essays Forest Path. In that book the author argues passionately that literature has the right and duty to concern itself with topical as well as eternal questions believing that it is just as important for a genuine writer to concern himself ``with so-called social set-up" as with the ``delicate and intimate feelings evoked by dealing with the eternal theme of love and hate".
The author shows the changes brought to the life of the collective farmers by economically sound labour conditions that provide them with incentives and ensure their participation in running the farm.
How does one make ``everyone feel to be master"? How does one ensure that ``everyone contributes to the common weal and derives benefit from it"? These are the questions that torment the characters in Boris Mozhayev's books.
Mozhayev and Fomenko are not, of course, the first to introduce these questions. They were raised powerfully by Valentin Ovechkm and Vladimir Tendryakov, and they were an abiding concern of Alexander Yashin. Fyodor Abramov's essay ``Beating About the Bush" deals with the same questions, and the evolution of Mikhail Pryaslin in The Pryaslins shows how he gradually comes to feel himself to be master of his farm and his land.
It is not by chance that I am underlining the sense of involvement and consistency with which our prose has pursued the same line for many years. For civic-mindedness and a sense of being master of one's land, public consciousness 193 and social involvement provide the real meaning of life. These are the qualities that transform work from drudgery into creative social activity. They do not only boost the efficiency of labour but offer satisfaction to the worker, and have moral as well as economic implications.
Civic-mindedness is the alpha and omega of our time, a continuation of the revolutionary tradition in the presentday conditions. Civic-mindedness under socialism is an essential ingredient of spirituality. An individual can best reveal bis creative potential by adopting a public-minded attitude towards life and work. Social activity prompted by social consciousness, a conscientious attitude towards one's job, personal responsibility for everything that happens, readiness to uphold truth and justice and public interests-such are the traits of a genuinely socialist type of individual that our society needs so much. It is the demand of our time that everyone should feel himself a citizen in the full sense of the word, a citizen interested in the national cause and bearing his share of responsibility for it.
Our literature is sensitive to that social need, and it considers civic-mindedness to be the core of the advanced individual of our time, promoting a sense of personal responsibility for the destinies of the people, society and state.
Responsible for everything-this is how Alexander Tvardovsky defined the civic essense of the Soviet character.
In life and in literature, the fostering of a sense of being master of one's collective farm, one's factory and moreover, of being a representative of one's country goes handin-hand with opposition to everything that prevents man from forming and displaying social awareness and civic attitudes. Depending on its results, that struggle helps or impedes social development because the philistine philosophy of life that opposes civic morality not only makes people spiritually oereft but is also a brake on social progress. The modern civic-minded character in Soviet literature challenges th6se social phenomena that are covered by the formula the dead grip the living''. He challenges social egoism and narrow-mindedness that adapt themselves to socialism, pettybourgeois anarchism, laxity of morals and discipline, careerseeking and bureaucratism which stifle initiative and independence of workers.
To us, a highly spiritual and moral individual is an 194 ideologically committed champion of good and truth. The heroes of the Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War were like that.
Civic courage is the hallmark of the modern hero in our life and literature. Civic courage requires at least as much will and inner strength as bravery at war.
It is not accidental that Lenin, from the outset of peaceful socialist construction, drew the attention of the Party and the revolutionaries to novel forms of struggle that were different from those the Party had waged to gain political power.
A vivid example is offered by Lenin's letter to Yezhov, an economic official, dated 27 September 1921. The letter was in reply to Yezhov's note in which he complained about divided authority and the tug-of-war between different government departments, about ``the sea of paper" involved in settling a practical matter. The note ended with the Vords, ``I am afraid that unless Lenin himself intervenes in this outrageous red tape, the matter will never be settled: it seems I nearly completed this matter ten times, and yet there is no end in sight.''
Lenin replied to Yezhov:
``You must share part of the blame for the red tape. Tor three years we have been shouting', 'I brought this matter to a conclusion ten times, it seems', you write. But the point is precisely this, that you have never brought the matter to the end, without 'it seems'.
``You have never brought it to the end.
``That struggle is difficult, to be sure.
``But difficult is not impossible.
``You have given up struggle and have not exhausted all the means of struggle.
Thus, in the early years of socialist construction Lenin invested the concept of struggle with a new meaning in accordance with the new revolutionary tasks. He stressed that advancing the interests of the Party and the people was going to DC difficult and urged the need for dedication, persistence and skill.
As if elaborating on the ideas expressed in the abovecited letter, Lenin in his speech at the Second All-Russia Congress of Political Education Departments, asked the question what impedes such struggle. Our laws? ``On the contrary! We have any number of laws! Why then have we 195 achieved no success in this struggle? Because it cannot be waged by propaganda alone. It can be done if the masses of the people help. No less than half our communists are incapable of fighting, to say nothing of those who are a hindrance in the fight."^^1^^
Lenin saw the main danger as coming from those who, out of personal, self-seeking and careerist interests, impeded struggle for the genuine Party cause and for a public-minded attitude towards work, and he demanded that the Party should purge itself of such people.
In the new conditions of peaceful creative work Lenin considered that the Party attitude consisted mainly in businesslike and statesmanlike thinking, dedication to the national interest and in ``dexterity'', to use his favourite word by which he meant intelligent, creative and efficient approach, to % the task assigned one by the Party and readiness to challenge any economic management practices that run counter to the state interests and are bred by red tape, indifference, career-seeking, irresponsibility and individualism.
For Lenin Party-mindedness was synonymous with truth, honesty and conscience. Party-minded people are ideologically committed and highly moral, courageous citizens and men of integrity.
Civic commitment is already implied in Lenin's first definition of Party-mindedness: ``... materialism includes partisanship, so to speak, and enjoins the direct and open adoption of the standpoint of a definite social group in any assessment of events.''^^2^^
Civic-mindedness and Party-mindedness as understood today manifest themselves in the first place at work, and they form the basis of the hero of our life and literature and make him a highly moral and socially aware individual.
Oleg Kuvayev's novel Territory is riveting not only because oT its exotic setting and circumstances, but also because of the civic commitment of the heroes and the author.
The novel is about geologists prospecting gold in rigorous Far North. Kuvayev's characters, however, reveal themselves not only in the struggle against the elements. The reader _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 75.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 401.
196 finds himself engrossed in the clash of points of view as to how best to develop the remote wild country.It is a clash of brains, strategies and different approaches to business: it is talent versus mediocrity, civic-- mindedness versus narrow individualism. This confrontation adds a moral and social dimension to the attraction of exotic setting.
Trie central character in Territory is a talented geologist by the name of Chinkov, a ``wizard of gold-searching''. Chinkov knows where gold is and how to find it. But the ``Buddha'', as he is called by his co-workers, is up not only against harsh nature, the unyielding ``territory'' in the Far North in much of which man has never set foot before. He also has to overcome the resistance of Robykin, Chief Engineer at Severostroy agency. The novel shows that fighting Rooykin and his like is at times as difficult as fighting the unwelcoming wilderness of the tundra.
To oppose his enemy, it is necessary, among other things, to master the tactic of that struggle, which is unlike any other struggle. Chinkov's strength derives from the fact that he is as skilful at fighting Robykin as at his profession of gold-prospecting.
The vicissitudes of the tough struggle taxed all Chinkov's perseverance, sagacity, cold calculation, tactical skill, talent for organisation, the authority of a leader, ability to generate hope that gold can indeed be found in the ``territory'', and to carry along with him his motley team. Chinkov triumphs in the struggle against nature and against Robykin and his like.
Chinkov, and the author, are tormented by the question of the meaning of life and morality.
How does Chinkov (the ``Buddha'') keep his integrity in the struggle? How does one stay moral in the rough-- andtumble of the fight which involves thrusts and counterthrusts and calls for a great deal of cunning, all for the sake of promoting the cause?
Chinkov is even regarded as one of his own kind by Gurin, a cynical depraved man: ``He has a cause. He has intelligence. And no prejudice called ethics.'' Chinkov himself, in a sad comment on the ``stupid and ignorant" nickname of Buddha says of himself, ``You know, I made a point of reading a life of Gautama who later came to be referred to as the Buddha. He and I are antipodes. He was a man 197 of lofty morality, but I am sinful. There is no commandment I have not broken. He preached contemplation and noninvolvement in the mundane affairs, but I am involved in the vanities of the world. He was a holy man, but who would call me a righteous man?''
Behind that tongue-in-cheek irony about ``lofty moral rules" we are aware of a set of genuine moral principles, an understanding that ``a hundred per cent virtue can at present only be found in legends, but if you believe in your cause with lust and fury, life is worth living".
Kuvayev's characters are amazed at ``the force that makes them take risks, worry and stick their necks out. That force stemmed from their work. But what is work? Who can define it in one brief and comprehensive word? Passion? A way to self-assertion? Necessity? Way to survival? Play? One's function in society? One could go on ad infinitum."
The cause that engages the characters in Territory claims the whole of man. It is a cause not ``in the name of money, because they knew what a fast buck meant during the work on the territory'''; and not even out of duty, for real duty is inside man and not in verbal protestations, not even for glory, but for the sake of the unknown, which is what an individual is conceived and lives for. In the name of giving meaning to life.
Only that person is capable of meaningful existence who has overcome narrow egotism, who has overcome the lust for gain and the spell or comfortable homely truths and who has opened his soul to the good of mankind.
Alan's social role, moral attitudes, civic consciousness and a feeling of being the master of one's factory or farm is central to the socialist system of ethic values. For man realises himself as an individual, finds the meaning of existence and enriches his soul by becoming involved in the common cause, in the collective creative effort, in work for the good of the community.
We have already said that the spirituality of an individual is determined above all by his involvement in the urgent concerns of society, the scope of one's social interests and the diversity of one's social relations and links with other people. Even as man develops inwardly and becomes more active and conscious socially, he acquires deeper interest in the social and spiritual aspects of life. 198
198Belinsky believed that man's spirituality was measured by ``...the emotion, reason and will which express his eternal and immanent essence".
We believe, not in the divine, but in the social essence of man.
The theoretical foundation for a realistic solution of the problem of values is provided by the philosophical concept of man developed by Karl Marx who defined man's essence as ``a totality of all social relations".
Marx's view of the nature of man overcomes the limitation both of the vulgar-materialist, naturalistic view of man as a biological creature, and of idealistic interpretation of man which ignores his social nature and assumes an irrational position in explaining his spiritual life. Marx overcame both extremes because he discovered the real dialectic of biological and social determination of man, and interpreted man as an extension of nature and society, as a social as well as biological animal.
It is man's social activity in changing the world that makes man what he is and qualitatively distinguishes him from the world of nature, investing him with spirit,' i.e. reason and conscience, an ability to build a world in accordance with the laws of goodness, truth and beauty. From this flows the spiritual richness of the individual: ``real spiritual wealth of an individual depends totally on the richness of his actual relations" (Karl Marx), relations with the world and society of men involving active work for revolutionary transformation of the world, relations in which the social and creative nature of man is best expressed.
Accordingly, Soviet literature looks for the solution of the problem of human values in work to change the world.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Two Points of ViewSoviet literature's defence and treatment of human values today has worldwide implications. Values and their future in the modern world is the key problem facing mankind. ``All progress is reactionary if man falls,'' writes the poet Voznesensky. And this is echoed by a historian: ``The historian attests, that man is an intelligent and social creature. 199 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1980/OHV203/20070407/203.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.04.06) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ So one can call progressive those elements in man's historical activity that meet these aspects of his nature and help to reveal them most fully. And yet that is not enough to define progress. Intelligence and social nature are merely the properties of a whole man, which means that they are subordinate to some all-encompassing element which describes man as an entity.'' People have used different words to define that element, but in all languages they derive from the same root and concept which means ``humanity''.
This is the concept of progress as defined by Nikolai Konrad, a major Soviet historian, in his On the Meaning of History, parts of which have been printed in the book west and East. He posits humanism as the supreme criterion of human progress.
Konrad believes that mankind has entered a crucial phase of its historical development when it can either forfeit its humanity or use it as the basis for the Golden Age on earth, to realise what Dostoyevsky called ``a dream more incredible than any, but a dream for which people have given their lives and all their strength, for which prophets died and suffered, and without which nations do not want to live and cannot even die''. Mankind has reached this fateful line because of the power it has attained-the power of knowledge and reason.
But reason and its development is just one component of progress. ``At present man stands poised to master the innermost and greatest forces of nature,'' writes Konrad, ``and time has confronted him with a stark question, the question about himself. What is man who masters the forces of nature? What are his rights and duties before nature and himself? If one takes humanism to mean the great element of human activity that has guided man up until now along the road of progress, one must say that our present task in this sphere is to include nature not only within human life but within the sphere of humanism, in other words, in humanising all the science of nature. Otherwise our power over the forces of nature may become our curse by depriving man of his humanity.''
This is a Soviet scholar's view of the relationship between the scientific and technological revolution and humanism expressing his grave concern and social involvement characteristic of socialism and aimed at turning man's power into an unqualified good and not into an eschatological evil.
200I was reminded of Konrad's work, written in 1961--1965, by the book of the prominent English historian and philologist Frank Leavis entitled Nor Shall My Sword. Discourses on Pluralism, Compassion and Social Hope (1972) wholly devoted to what seems to be the same theme, the menace of scientific and technological progress to humanitarian culture.
The veteran English scholar (who is over eighty) represents the conservative enlightenment humanistic tradition, and he is extremely worried about the fate of human values in the modern capitalist world.
Recalling his trip to the United States back in 1943 he writes with a. kind of I-told-you-so satisfaction about the sad prediction he had been able to make even then of the advent of a technocratic society: mechanisation of man's inner world which generates a particular inertness in understanding one's responsibility to life, oneself and society, a decline of social lire and culture, loss of social memory and moral goals. These destructive processes have since increased many times. The scientific and technological progress and growing material well-being in the post-war decades in his own country too, says Leavis, have been accompanied by a general spiritual impoverishment of the individual, a break in the continuity of tradition, and Americanisation of life. It appears that the rapidly developing science and technology are incapable of meeting the spiritual needs of the individual.
The critic describes the 20th century as technocratic-Benthamian referring to the founder of bourgeois pragmatism and utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham, and asserts that the present-day technocratic-Benthamian civilisation ignores man's creative potential, and creates a spiritual void which he calls philistinism.
A person living in such conditions misses the creative element in life. Most industrial workers derive no satisfaction from their work and live for the sake of leisure, saving money for it, yet do not know how to use it and make do with its most primitive forms. Civilisation has not made them spiritually rich. Leavis describes modern enlightenment as civilised barbarism.
In his book he inveighs against C. P. Snow, a prominent English writer who was educated as a physicist, for his Harvard lecture ``The Two Cultures and the Scientific 201 Revolution''. He takes Snow to task for allegedly trying to assert the scientific-technological culture on the ``bones'' of the humanitarian culture. Leavis stresses that he does not want to see scientific and technological progress halted, but he does oppose scientific, technological and material progress being regarded as an absolute and self-sufficient aim of human existence. He insists that the higher the rate of scientific and technological development the more urgent the need for people to pool their efforts to assert the creative element that would withstand the onslaught of rapid change.
While giving due to science and technology as a wonderful collective product of human reason, Leavis believes in a still higher achievement of man's creative endeavour without which the triumphant building of the edifice of science would have been impossible, and that is the world of man including language and culture.
Leavis maintains that for man, irrespective of his profession, there exists only one culture, the traditional humanitarian and humanistic culture. The sciences serve man and are important for him, but they are as dispassionate as nature. They cannot provide man with criteria of humanistic values. Thus, the natural sciences and art are, to Leavis, phenomena belonging to two qualitatively different systems. The world of science is the natural world while the world of art and traditional culture is the world of man. Leavis is convinced that it is humanitarian culture that helps man to become aware of his human individuality. It provides him with criteria in the assessment of the world and a sense of what should be valued and what should be rejected.
What is the way out?
Leavis' positive programme has the typical limitations of an idealistic enligntener who continues the historical and cultural traditions of the 19th century.
He argues justly that mankind needs to perceive its life as meaningful. The thirst for meaning in life is not satisfied by a world cup for the national football team or by the discovery of new scientific laws. However, Leavis attributes the social ills of modern society not to social but to humanitarian reasons: a break with the cultural tradition, and with the spiritual experience which mankind has accumulated over the centuries. Without going into the social causes of the 202 menace posed by the break with the ``cultural tradition" and the growing despiritualisation of life in capitalist society, Leavis proposes a rather original way to save numan values, in which the humanitarian intellectuals are to play the leading role. The answer, in his view, is the university, a centre for educating genuine intelligentsia that would guarantee the preservation and continuity of cultural traition.
The recipe is unique in its naivity, especially if one considers that it comes from a serious scholar. While furiously rejecting the technocratic-Benthamian civilisation, he nevertheless fights shy of the idea of overcoming it socially, virtually excluding the socium from his philosophical conception and entertaining illusory hopes for ``quiet" transformation of society's intellectual life by means of universities and the efforts of the ``humanitarians''. In fact, it is not transformation but an attempt to counter the destructive processes of the bourgeois technocratic civilisation, and attempt that betrays Leavis as a man at a loss, who does not see a real way out of the situation .and his refusal to ``lay down the sword" as largely rhetorical.
Far more realistic is the world view of his colleague, the Soviet Marxist scholar Konrad who is no less concerned about the preservation and development of the humanistic values of man and society and the creative potential of man but who offers a far more effective and essentially different solution. It is the road of social transformation along socialist lines that creates real conditions for all-round creative development of the individual, for a life full of meaning, social involvement and responsibility, and hence highly creative and moral existence. The sense of social involvement and responsibility, and identification with the historic process is a measure of man's interest in and need for cultural values.
I would like to end this book by quoting Konrad reflecting on the social ways of solving the problem of values:
``With the elimination of exploitation of man by man, renunciation of wars-the sources of evil that have visited and continue to visit so much suffering on mankind-and with the humanisation of all science of nature, would not human society approach such a state when it would be possible to unite the development of history and the 203 movement of ethical categories generated by the mind, more specifically, the category of humanism, which is the key category as regards social implications? And would not such unity be achieved through ethical categories in general and humanitarian categories in particular being increasingly adopted as not only the norms of human behaviour but of the life of the community and state? All past human history and its present-day reality are crying for that. And we live by the nope that this will be the case.''
[204] __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END]Request to Readers~
Progress Publishers would be glad to have your opinion of this book, its translation and design and any suggestions you may have for future publications.
Please send all your comments to 17, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, USSR.
[205]Progress Publishers will soon publish:
PANKIN B.
Seven Essays on Lip and Literature
The author of this book is a journalist who for more than two decades was a staff member of Komsomolskaya Pravda-the central Soviet newspaper for young people-where his essays on literature and art regularly appeared.
B. Pankin speaks of problems of upbringing, of the work done in this respect by the Soviet press intended for young people, of its contacts with readers, of readers' letters and the discussions these letters start. The newspaper is a real spokesman for the young people and of powerful influence.
[206]Progress Publishers will soon publish:
AZIZYAN I., IVANOYA I. Monuments of Eternal Glory
This book by two well-known Soviet historians of architecture tells about many monuments to heroes of World War II and victims of fascism on the sites of major battles, concentration camps and other places of mass extermination both on Soviet territory and in other countries that fought against fascism. The authors deal in detail with new trends in architectural and plastic expression and synthesis of arts as revealed in those monuments and memorial complexes.
Lavishly illustrated with colour and black-and-white photographs.
[207]6018 29
[208]