Durham E-Theses The evolution of Iurii Trifonov as a writer Bage, Lisa Caroline How to cite: Bage, Lisa Caroline (1997) The evolution of Iurii Trifonov as a writer, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4805/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk THE EVOLUTION OF lURII TRIFONOV AS A WRITER Lisa Caroline Bage M.A. University of Durham Department of Russian 1997 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the written consent of the author and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 0^ ABSTRACT THE EVOLUTION OF lURII TRIFONOV AS A WRITER Lisa Caroline Bage The thesis chronologically examines the works of lurii Trifonov (1925-81) to show his evolution as a writer, from his first novel, the Socialist Realist Studenty, awarded a Stalin Prize in 1950, to his works of the 1970s and 1980s, in which he truthfully portrayed contemporary Soviet society and questioned the residual Communist ethic of the Brezhnev era. Trifonov occupied an interesting postion in Russian literary history, somewhere between the 'official' Soviet writers and the dissidents, trying to publish honest works under strict censorship in the USSR. I shall examine how under different political climates his works were republished and their content changed, while the final chapter covers post-humous works published thanks to glasnost, which show what he was forced to omit during his own lifetime. As he changes with time as a person, so do his works. The first chapter looks at Trifonov's family background and the death of his father during Stalin's purges. This was to have a great influence on Trifonov's life and works, in many of which he tried to understand his father's fate and that of his nation. Throughout his often heavily autobiographical works, Trifonov examines his country's past and present while trying to understand himself too. He showed the roots of the degeneration of his society both before and after the Russian Revolution, but also showed the beginnings of the current consumerism of post-communist Russia. Trifonov speaks for many of his fellow countrymen in his works and shows the totality of the Soviet experience over six decades, and beyond. In memory of my father INTRODUCTION Over the past ten to fifteen years there has been much critical reappraisal of the works of lurii Trifonov. This began with Tatiana Patera's Obzor tvorchestva i analiz moskovskikh povestei luriia TrifonovaS and Natalia Ivanova's Proza luriia Trifonova 2 in 1984, both comprehensive studies of Trifonov's works, followed by a number of books published in the West in the early 1990's.3 De Maegd- Soep concentrates more on Trifonov's personal life and similarities with Chekhov; Woll treats in depth the way in which Soviet censorship affected his work; Kolesnikoff gives another detailed overview, while Gillespie examines Trifonov's works through the concept of slitnost'. My treatment of Trifonov will be to examine his evolution as a writer, and as a person, throughout his life, and the influence of time and the evolution of contemporary Russia and the changing political system on his works. Time was a very important concept for Trifonov, and as he said «nHcaTejifa RonyKen H3MeHHTbCfl H paaBHBaxbc^i sMecre co BpeMeHeM.»4 Trifonov, like his father, was a quiet man and also very truthful. Finding the truth in the Soviet Union was complex and commitment to truthtelling was difficult for a Soviet writer, leading to much illness and stress for Trifonov. His friends, such as the Novokhatkos^ and Oklianksy^ recall him as having a great sense of humour and being a great storyteller despite his often morose exterior. He was always somewhat unsure of himself as a writer due to his experiences after the publication of Studenty. This apparently contradictory combination of traits is not surprising considering his background and the loss of his parents at a young age, with his mother writing from the camps to her children telling them 1 Obzor ivorchestva i analiz rnoskovskikh povestei luriia Trifonova, Ann Arbor Ardis, 1983, ^Proza luriia Trifonova, Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1984. 3 These include Carolina De Maegd-Soep, Trifonova and the Drama of the Russian Intelligentsia, Ghent: Ghent State University Russian Institute, 1990; Colin Partridge, Yuri Trifonov's 'The Moscow Cycle: A Critical Study, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990; Josephine Woll, invented Truth: The Soviet Reality and the Literary Imagination of lurii Trifonov, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991; Nina Kolesnikoff, Yury Trifonov: A Critical Study, Ann Arbon Ardis, 1991 and David Gillespie, lurii Trifonov: unity through time, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1992. 4' "Nravstvennye idealy ia ne izobrazhaiu, no imeiu." Iz pisem luriia Trifonova', Literaturnaia gazeta, 27 March 1991, p. 13. Vladimir Novokhatko, editor for Politizdat, for whom Trifonov wrote Neterpenie. He and his wife Galia were witnesses at Trifonov's marriage to his second wife. Alia Pastukhova. 6 lurii Okiiansky also wrote a critical work on Trifonov, lurii Trifonov: For tret-vospominanie, Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1987 never to lose their sense of humour. The death of Valentin greatly affected his son, and he tried to come to terms with all he, and Russia, had been through, and the reasons for his parents' disappearance. As his father had been a leading Bolshevik, he tried to understand Bolshevism and the society Valentin had helped to create. He admired his father's and others' idealism and high principles, but abhorred the terror preached and practised by some revolutionaries and the moral consequences. He is quoted as saying, while abroad in 1977, 'I accept the February Revolution, but not the October Revolution'."^ His own experiences and those of his family provide much of the subject matter for Trifonov's books; he puts a lot of his own character and experiences into his characters, and most of his works have an autobiographical element. As he changes with time, so do his works, from the enthusiasm of his first novel Studenty compared with the pessimism and reflections of death of his last works. In part, of course, the change of tone was dictated by censorship and self-censorship, and I have tried throughout to detail the alterations and omissions imposed by the author himself or by his editors to later editions of earlier published works. Nevertheless, I believe the step by step chronological analysis of Trifonov's development as a writer shows much more than a man adapting to the requirements of his time. It shows a painstaking and fundamentally honest process of self-discovery and of the reassessment of society in the light of historical enquiry. By reflecting his time, however, Trifonov's writing shows the totality of the Soviet experience for himself and the families of those who made the Russian Revolution over six decades. Quoted in H. Ermolaev, The Theme of Terror in Starik' in Arnold McMillin (ed.), Aspects of Modern Russian and Czech Literature: Selected Papers of the Third World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1989, p. 105: "The author said this during a visit to Oberlin College in 1977 in the presence of Professor John B. Dunlop." CHAPTER 1 CHILDHOOD AND FAMILY BACKGROUND lurii Valentinovich Trifonov was bom on 28th of August, 1925 in Moscow, the son of an old Bolshevik Valentin Andreevich and Zhenia Lurie, who was from a revolutionary family. Her mother, Tatiana Slovatinskaia, was an old revolutionary, a party member from 1904, acquainted with Lenin, Stalin, and Kalinin, amongst others, and had at one time been a secretary in the Politburo. Valentin Trifonov was of Don Cossack descent, bom the son of a teacher in 1888 in the village of Verkhne-Kundriuchenskii, in the Novocherkassk region. When he was seven years old his parents died, and so he and his elder brother Evgenii moved to the town of Maikop. In 1904 they joined the Social Democratic Party in Rostov and took part in the 1905 Revolution. When arrested in 1906, the brothers swapped names as Evgenii was old enough to be executed for his part in the 1905 revolution. In this way his life was saved.^ From this time on the brothers spent many years in camps or exile, although they escaped from time to time.2 Trifonov himself says that his father said or wrote little about his time in the camps, and when he did it was only in a jokey manner.3 Thus as a child, Trifonov viewed his father's time in the camps in a rather unserious and romantic light. It was not until years later that he appreciated what his father had endured for the cause, along with many other revolutionaries with the same high principles and dedication to create a new society. In 1917, Valentin was in Petrograd when Nicholas 11 abdicated. He was secretary of the Bolshevik group in the Petrograd Soviet, and in August, both brothers helped to set up and command the Red Guard there (although of course after the Purges, official history denied their role and said it was formed at a later date).