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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Cognitive Counterparts: The Literature of Eastern Europe's Volatile Political Times, 1917- 2017 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1sz5h94k Author Kuruc, Teresa Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO Cognitive Counterparts: The Literature of Eastern Europe’s Volatile Political Times, 1917-2017 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Teresa Constance Kuruc Committee in charge: Professor Amelia Glaser, Chair Professor Steven Cassedy Professor Sal Nicolazzo Professor Wm. Arctander O’Brien Professor Patrick Patterson 2018 Copyright Teresa Constance Kuruc All rights reserved The Dissertation of Teresa Constance Kuruc is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Chair University of California San Diego 2018 iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, my sister and brothers, and Scott for providing for me in every way during this process. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ...........................................................................................................................iii Dedication ................................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ v Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... vi Vita ........................................................................................................................................... vii Abstract of the Dissertation ...................................................................................................... viii Introduction – Counterparts: Keys to Negotiating Change ........................................................... 1 Chapter One – An Unsentimental Journey: Ostranenie and Perceiving Political Change ............ 18 Chapter Two – “My Life Was Our Life”: Karel Čapek’s Answer to the Czech Question ........... 46 Chapter Three – “Here We Have Communism”: Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl as Heterotopic Documentary .............................................................................. 74 Chapter Four – “We’re One but We’re Not the Same”: Memory, Friendship, and Imagining the “Off-Modern Nation” in Serhiy Zhadan’s Voroshilovgrad .......................... 101 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 127 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 132 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing this dissertation would not have been possible without my committee – Steven Cassedy, Sal Nicolazzo, Patrick Patterson, and William O’Brien – who generously offered their time and insights. My advisor, Amelia Glaser, has pushed me to become a more critical thinker and has helped me to find my scholarly voice. Amelia, I cannot thank you enough for your kind and patient guidance. vi VITA 2005 Bachelor of Arts, The Ohio State University 2006-2007 Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University 2007 Master of Arts, The Ohio State University 2007 Lecturer, Indiana University 2010-2013 Lecturer, Grossmont Community College 2013-2018 Teaching Assistant, University of California San Diego 2018 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California San Diego FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Comparative Literature vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Cognitive Counterparts: The Literature of Eastern Europe’s Volatile Political Times, 1917-2017 by Teresa Constance Kuruc Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California San Diego, 2018 Professor Amelia Glaser, Chair Intense moments of political and ideological change in Eastern Europe – namely the Russian Revolution, interwar nation-building movements, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent rise of nationalist populism – presented people with a difficult choice: to cling to historical perspectives or to wholly embrace a new ideology. Writers from these periods of change often are defined by how their aesthetic choices either supported or rejected political and ideological movements. From our vantage point in 2018, we believe that we clearly understand which movements succeeded and failed and, as a result, we categorize associated writers as protagonists or antagonists, progressive thinkers or inhabitants of the wrong side of history. But viii these binaries influence the construction of narratives that mask all the critical contingencies of everyday life. Accordingly, this dissertation asks how literature from these volatile times offers ways of resolving the divisions between political and ideological changes, as abstract notions, and the tangible quotidian experience of them. Through an examination of literary case studies from the aforementioned periods in Eastern Europe, I identify an aesthetics of cognitive flexibility, which illuminates the cognitive counterpart, a concept that claims that each term, idea, and individual identity involved in political and ideological change has a necessary other, without which whole and ethical everyday life cannot happen. The four case studies that constitute this dissertation suggest that both within and among individuals is a constant effort to achieve cohesion between one experience and another, one worldview and another, one truth and another, and even between success and failure. The cognitive counterpart supports a nuanced understanding of fossilized perceptions of revolutionaries, nationalists, and dissidents by arguing that, in the context of ordinary life, these categories are rarely so absolute and one-sided as the bureaucratic mechanisms that support or contest them would claim. Reading with an eye for cognitive counterparts uncovers a way literary aesthetics are manifested in quotidian life, not as a symbolic vessel of an abstract idea but as a real-world vehicle for the empathetic and ethical implementation of political change. ix Introduction – Counterparts: Keys to Negotiating Tension In 1915 Russia had been fighting in World War I for about a year. Talk of socialist revolution had been simmering since Bloody Sunday and the strikes and protests of 1905 had destabilized Romanov rule.1 During that year, art collector, Madame Natalya Dobychina, hosted 0,10 The Last Exhibition of Futurist Paintings in her parlor gallery on the first floor of Adamini House in St. Petersburg. The setting itself is indicative of the tension between past and future, tradition and impending political and ideological change. On one hand, Adamini House is solidly situated in the realm of traditional Russian political symbolism. It stands near the Field of Mars, a large square in central St. Petersburg, which is the site of official military parades, and is located not far from critical historic monuments like The Bronze Horseman, the famous statue of Peter the Great. On the other hand, in 1915, Adamini House was linked to a sense that significant change was at hand. Dobychina lived in an apartment on the second floor of Adamini House, which had been the lodging of significant Russian cultural figures like Alexander Pushkin, who by then was canonized as the father of the Russian literary language. But she hosted avant-garde artists, such as Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vladimir Mayakovsky, who wanted to overcome Russia’s cultural past with a completely new way of seeing.2 Her gallery was full of seemingly conflicting ideas: modern art abutted Russian tradition, and political symbolism crept into ordinary home life. At the same time, it is representative of what this dissertation calls cognitive 1 In 1905, a Russian Orthodox priest named Georgy Gapon led a peaceful procession of workers to present Tsar Nicholas II with a petition that asked for better working conditions. The Tsar’s guard fired upon the crowd, killing hundreds. The event, known as Bloody Sunday, was a part of a number of strikes and uprisings in St. Petersburg that led the Tsar to institute the Duma (parliament) and accept a constitutional monarchy. In reality, the Duma did not allow for any greater rule by the people. 2 Linda Boersma, 0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting, (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1994), 34. 1 counterparts – the necessary others to a term, an idea, or an identity, without which a project, a work of art, or a being is incomplete. The negotiation of the tension between cognitive counterparts, such as historical tradition and elements of modernity, was critical to the realization of the 0,10 exhibition. At 0,10, two artists who would be key players in the socialist life-building movement that followed the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin, handled this convergence of opposites in ways that exemplify two understandings