DOCSLIB.ORG

Of Russian Literaturepart I Russian Literature: Background, Foreground, Creative Cognition

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Of Russian Literaturepart I Russian Literature: Background, Foreground, Creative Cognition The Mythopoetic “Vectors” of Russian LiteraturePART I Russian Literature: Background, Foreground, Creative Cognition Chapter 1 The Mythopoetic “Vectors” of 27. Russian Literature1 Any national literature is to some significant extent a mirror held up to its people’s collective countenance: its myths, aspirations, national triumphs and traumas, current ideologies, historical understanding, lin guistic tra- ditions. But it is also more than that — more than a reflection in the glass of what has come before and what is now, even as one glances into it, passing from view. It is, in a real sense, generative of new meaning, and thus capable of shaping that countenance in the future. For the society that takes its literary products seriously, the text of a novel or poem can be a kind of genetic code2 for predicting, not concrete outcomes or actual progeny, but something no less pregnant with future action: the forms of a culture’s historical imagination. The variations seem limitless, and yet how is it we are able to determine any given work of literature is clearly identifiable as Russian? Why could Flaubert’s Emma Bovary in some sense not be imagin- ed by the great realist who created Anna Karenina? How is Dostoevsky’s 1 Originally appeared 2 See Chapter 4 in Part 1 as part 1 of the essay/chapter of the present volume with its “Russian Literature,” in Cambridge discussion of how genes and Companion to Modern Russian “memes” work together to create Culture, ed. Nicholas Rzhevsky an individual’s and a culture’s (Cambridge: Cambridge University views of itself. Press, 1998), 161–204. Russian Literature: Background, Foreground,Pushkin Creative the Poet, Cognition Pushkin the Thinker Reading Russian Writers Reading Themselves and Others Marmeladov both alike, but more importantly, unlike Dickens’s Micawber? What, in short, can be shown in a mirror that speaks back? Few societies have been more dependent on their literature for overall meaning (social, psychological, political, historical, religious, erotic) than the Russia of the modern period (1800 to the present). For a variety of reasons we will touch upon in the pages to follow, Russians have turned repeatedly to their literature as the principal source of their national identity and cultural mythology. But this relationship to the written word is a two-edged sword. It gives Russian literature both a high seri ousness that can be genuinely inspiring and at times an intrusive didacti cism that can be annoying to a more pluralistic (or “secular”) Western audience. Regardless of one’s orientation as reader, however, Russian culture is unthinkable without this literature — and not only the great novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky out of which Westerners have for decades constructed their own versions of “Russianness.” The purpose of the present study is to acquaint the non-specialist reader with the basic cultural contours necessary to read and understand this literature, including its formative influences and salient themes. Along the way, and where appropriate, I will also discuss how certain important Russian writers and cultural figures creatively 28. engage aspects of contemporary Western thought. The goal here cannot PART I be historical thoroughness or authoritative canon-formation, but rather a reasonably accurate readerly orientation — that is, an attitude toward the subject that takes its cultural values seriously and tries to understand its various verbal traces in their proper context. Formative influences, salient themes In recent times, culture has been compared to a kind of “supraconscious ness” hovering over the physical globe in a circumambient cloud. It manipulates on a massive scale the same communicative codes that every human being operates in his/her individual world. Building on discover ies in cell biology, organic chemistry, and brain science, the Russian theo rist and literary scholar Yury Lotman has devised the term “semiosphere” to capture this notion of human communication writ large as cultural ecosystem: the place where intracranial brain function (i.e. the relation ship between right and left hemispheres), meaning production, and the shapes and symbols we project onto (or extract from) the external world coalesce The Mythopoetic “Vectors” of Russian Literature into our collective organism’s psychic drive for growth and dis covery. That this site is a metaphor, a product of language and therefore invisible like the atmosphere over the earth, does not make it any less “real” to those constructing meaning out of their interactions with others. In this regard, literature has traditionally been seen as a rich source of communication (i.e. new information) because, potentially, many different codes and “languages” (in the sense of stylistic registers, dialects, idiosyncratic speech patterns, etc.) can coexist and be artfully juxtaposed within its boundaries. Modern Russian literature, as I have already intimated, has played a dynamic, even crucial role in the larger “ecosystem” of Russian culture. To appreciate this role, let us propose another metaphor — an interior photograph, or what neurosurgeons call a CAT scan, of the Russian liter ary “brain.” This figure of speech is, of course, inexact, in that it registers likeness more than difference (as all metaphors do); and it cannot do justice to subtle changes over time or to the historical specificity of certain phenomena. Still, as a means of isolating global psychic tendencies that become, as it were, imprinted on the larger social organism’s memory, it is not without heuristic value. Exceptions to these tendencies exist, to be sure, some of them very significant, but the fact that these exceptions take the tendencies into account (i.e. they thwart them or undermine them but 29. they do not ignore them) means that this psychic mapping is not invisible. Chapter 1 Why these tendencies and not others have become salient in the Russian context is buried deep in the past, and is as much a question of cultural mythology (Russians’ sacred legends about themselves and about their destiny as a people) as of history per se. The list could of course be expanded, but the following seem a good place to start: (1) Religious sensibility (dukhovnost’) (2) Maximalism (3) Writer as secular saint (4) Heterodox literary forms (5) Belatedness (6) Literature as social conscience (7) Problem of personality (lichnost’) (8) Space-time oppositions (East/West, old/new) (9) Eros-cum-national myth (1) Religious sensibility. Perhaps the first and arguably the most impor tant formative influence/psychological trait to come to mind is Russian culture’s Russian Literature: Background, Foreground,Pushkin Creative the Poet, Cognition Pushkin the Thinker Reading Russian Writers Reading Themselves and Others pervasive spirituality (dukhovnost’) and, correlatively, the written word’s traditionally sacred status. Russia (Kievan Rus’) was Christianized under Prince Vladimir in the year 988, and from roughly that point until well into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the entire notion of literature as a secular form of pleasure or edification was largely moot. There were saints’ lives (vitae), sermons, chronicles, and even epics (e.g. The Igor Tale), but what is interesting from a modern vantage is that the category of “fiction” (i.e. a self-contained world wholly created through words that is understood by its reader to be artificial, hence “untrue”) came late to Russian literature. Indeed, it can be argued that much of the attraction of the great works of Russian literature is due to th is tendency of reader reception/perception: Russian “fictions” about the world are more “real” than the real-life context into which they are read and absorbed. Russian writers have long operated under the convic tion that they are writing, not one more book, but versions, each in its way sacred, of The Book (Bible). Thus, when some modern Russian writers have taken a militantly materialist, anti-spiritualist approach to reality, the fervidness and single- mindedness of their commitment to new belief systems often suggest a replay of various medieval models of behavior, replete with the latter’s 30. thematics of conversion. Likewise, Leo Tolstoy’s anti-clericalism and his PART I sharp criticism of Orthodox dogma and ritual are, significantly, not in the name of Voltairean enlightenment and urbane secularism but in that of a new religion, which came to be known as “Tolstoyanism.” One of the attributes of this religious sensibility that continues in the shadow life of some of the most influential Russian poems, novels, and dramas is the transposing of medieval forms of sacred writing (especially hagiography) to later secular works. Examples include Ivan Turgenev’s “Living Relics,” Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, Sergei Stepnyak -Kravchinsky’s Andrei Kozhukhov, Maksim Gorky’s Mother. What the vita requires is that the personal become sanctified, monumentalized, sub sumed within the impersonality of holiness, which means — if one con- siders how much the modern novel in the European and Anglo-American “bourgeois” traditions depends on individual, concrete examples of an open, developing biography and history (e.g. the Bildungsroman) — that in many instances the Russian novel will be acting against prevailing trends in Western practice. Saintly behavior can be actively submissive (the “meek” model of the martyred brothers Boris and Gleb) or defiantly The Mythopoetic “Vectors” of Russian
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Russian (RUS) 1
    Russian (RUS) 1 RUSSIAN (RUS) RUS 53: Intermediate Intensive Russian for Graduate Students 3 Credits RUS 1: Elementary Russian I Continued intensive study of Russian at the intermediate level: reading, 4 Credits writing, speaking, listening, cultural contexts. RUS 053 Intermediate Intensive Russian for Graduate Students (3)This is the third in a series Audio-lingual approach to basic Russian; writing. Students who have of three courses designed to give students an intermediate intensive received high school credit for two or more years of Russian may not knowledge of Russian. Continued intensive study of Russian at the schedule this course for credit, without the permission of the department. intermediate level: reading, writing, speaking, listening, and cultural contexts. Lessons are taught in an authentic cultural context. Bachelor of Arts: 2nd Foreign/World Language (All) Prerequisite: RUS 052 or equivalent, and graduate standing RUS 2: Elementary Russian II 4 Credits RUS 83: First-Year Seminar in Russian Audio-lingual approach to basic Russian continued; writing. Students 3 Credits who have received high school credit for four years of Russian may not schedule this course for credit, without the permission of the department. Russia's cultural past and present. RUS 083S First-Year Seminar in Russian (3) (GH;FYS;US;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts Prerequisite: RUS 001 degree requirements.Russia, the world's largest country stretching Bachelor of Arts: 2nd Foreign/World Language (All) over eleven time zones in Europe and Asia, is currently undergoing a dramatic transformation. For the past hundred years, Russia has RUS 3: Intermediate Russian served as a laboratory of gigantic dimensions as various social ideals 4 Credits were implemented with unprecedented radicalism.
    [Show full text]
  • Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports Tim Harte Bryn Mawr College, [email protected]
    Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Russian Faculty Research and Scholarship Russian 2009 Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports Tim Harte Bryn Mawr College, [email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/russian_pubs Custom Citation Harte, Tim. "Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports," Nabokov Studies 12.1 (2009): 147-166. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/russian_pubs/1 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tim Harte Bryn Mawr College Dec. 2012 Athletic Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov and the Aesthetic Thrill of Sports “People have played for as long as they have existed,” Vladimir Nabokov remarked in 1925. “During certain eras—holidays for humanity—people have taken a particular fancy to games. As it was in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, so it is in our present-day Europe” (“Braitenshtreter – Paolino,” 749). 1 For Nabokov, foremost among these popular games were sports competitions. An ardent athlete and avid sports fan, Nabokov delighted in the competitive spirit of athletics and creatively explored their aesthetic as well as philosophical ramifications through his poetry and prose. As an essential, yet underappreciated component of the Russian-American writer’s art, sports appeared first in early verse by Nabokov before subsequently providing a recurring theme in his fiction. The literary and the athletic, although seemingly incongruous modes of human activity, frequently intersected for Nabokov, who celebrated the thrills, vigor, and beauty of sports in his present-day “holiday for humanity” with a joyous energy befitting such physical activity.
    [Show full text]
  • Dmitry Uzlaner, Kristina Stoeckl the Legacy of Pitirim Sorokin in The
    Published in: Journal of Classical Sociology 2018, Vol. 18(2) 133 – 153 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468795X17740734 Dmitry Uzlaner, Kristina Stoeckl The legacy of Pitirim Sorokin in the transnational alliances of moral conservatives This article examines the legacy of Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889 - 1968), a Harvard sociologist from the Russian emigration . The a uthors scrutini z e Sorokin as one of the nodal point s for today’s moral conservatism . As a scholar, Sorokin has been relegated to the margins of his discipline, but his legacy as a public intellectual has persisted in the United States and has soared in Russia over the last three decades. Th e analysis in this article spans the two poles of reception, the United States and Russia, two countries that have made twenty - first - century moral conservatism a transnational phenomenon . Four aspects of Sorokin’s legacy are especially relevant in this context: his emphasis on values, his notion of the ‘sensate culture’, his ideas about the family, and his vision for moral revival. The a uthors conclude that Sorokin functions as a nodal point that binds together individual actors and ideas across national, cultural and linguistic barriers. The article is based on a firsthand analysis of moral conservative discourse and documents, on qualitative interviews and on scholarly literature. Keywords: Pitirim So rokin, moral conservatism, Russia - US relations, culture war s , transnational conservative alliances. Introduction When Karl Mannheim subtitled his 1925 study on conservatism ‘a contribution to the sociology of knowledge’, he did so in order to emphasis e that he was interested in conservatism as a coherent form of reasoning, a style of thinking ( Denkstil ) born out of a specific historical and sociological constellation.
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding the Roots of Collectivism and Individualism in Russia Through an Exploration of Selected Russian Literature - and - Spiritual Exercises Through Art
    Understanding the Roots of Collectivism and Individualism in Russia through an Exploration of Selected Russian Literature - and - Spiritual Exercises through Art. Understanding Reverse Perspective in Old Russian Iconography by Ihar Maslenikau B.A., Minsk, 1991 Extended Essays Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Ihar Maslenikau 2015 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Fall 2015 Approval Name: Ihar Maslenikau Degree: Master of Arts Title: Understanding the Roots of Collectivism and Individualism in Russia through an Exploration of Selected Russian Literature - and - Spiritual Exercises through Art. Understanding of Reverse Perspective in Old Russian Iconography Examining Committee: Chair: Gary McCarron Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication Graduate Chair, Graduate Liberal Studies Program Jerry Zaslove Senior Supervisor Professor Emeritus Humanities and English Heesoon Bai Supervisor Professor Faculty of Education Paul Crowe External Examiner Associate Professor Humanities and Asia-Canada Program Date Defended/Approved: November 25, 2015 ii Abstract The first essay is a sustained reflection on and response to the question of why the notion of collectivism and collective coexistence has been so deeply entrenched in the Russian society and in the Russian psyche and is still pervasive in today's Russia, a quarter of a century after the fall of communism. It examines the development of ideas of collectivism and individualism in Russian society, focusing on the cultural aspects based on the examples of selected works from Russian literature. It also searches for the answers in the philosophical works of Vladimir Solovyov, Nicolas Berdyaev and Vladimir Lossky.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cases of Venedikt Erofeev, Kurt Vonnegut, and Victor Pelevin
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Scholarship@Western Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-21-2012 12:00 AM Burying Dystopia: the Cases of Venedikt Erofeev, Kurt Vonnegut, and Victor Pelevin Natalya Domina The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Professor Calin-Andrei Mihailescu The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Natalya Domina 2012 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Domina, Natalya, "Burying Dystopia: the Cases of Venedikt Erofeev, Kurt Vonnegut, and Victor Pelevin" (2012). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 834. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/834 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BURYING DYSTOPIA: THE CASES OF VENEDIKT EROFEEV, KURT VONNEGUT, AND VICTOR PELEVIN (Spine Title: BURYING DYSTOPIA) (Thesis Format: Monograph) by Natalya Domina Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada Natalya Domina 2012 THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SCHOOL OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners ____________________________ ________________________________ Prof.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading and Writing Against Destruction
    Transcultural Studies, 4 (2008), 107-117. EKATERINA NEKLYUDOVA READING AND WRITING AGAINST DESTRUCTION This article deals with the tactics of survival that the inmates of Gulag (the penitentiary system of prisons and labor camps in the Soviet Union)1 practiced while imprisoned. In particular, I focus on the theme of reading and writing in the conditions of the Soviet prisons and labor camps, where writing was mostly prohibited, and reading was limited and highly regulated and censored. However, the inmates of Soviet prisons managed to create, read, write and even publish their notes while incarcerated. I show how three survivors of the Soviet camps – Varlam Shalamov, Evgenia Ginzburg, and Eduard Kuznetsov used the acts of reading and writing to preserve their identities from complete corruption and disintegration. I argue that word as a grammatical unit of text initiates the process of the recovery and deliverance of prisoners’ morale. Varlam Shalamov (1907-1982), a writer and a journalist, was born in Rus- sian city of Vologda. He spent seventeen years in total in prisons and labor camps of Kolyma (1929-1931, 1937-1943, 1943-1951). When Shalamov was released and returned from the camps to the Western part of Russia (Kalinin- grad), he started recording his camp experience in the form of the semi- fictional, semi-documentary Kolymskie rasskazy [Kolyma Tales].2 Even though his camp prose was never published in the Soviet Union in his lifetime, it received worldwide publicity: Kolyma Tales was distributed by the under- ground movement of Samizdat and published abroad. The impact of these short stories was immense: they were considered as the most authentic and merciless descriptions of prisoners’ sufferings in the Soviet camps of the Sta- linist regime.
    [Show full text]
  • Peter Chaadaev: Between the Love of Fatherland and the Love of Truth
    PETER CHAADAEV: BETWEEN THE LOVE OF FATHERLAND AND THE LOVE OF TRUTH BOOK OF ABSTRACTS International Conference Krakow Meetings 2016 June 5–8, 2016 Benedictine Abbey in Tyniec, Krakow, Poland ORGANIZERS: Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow Instituto de Filosofia Edith Stein in Granada International Center for the Study of the Christian Orient in Granada HONORARY PATRONAGE: Council of European Bishops’ Conferences INVITED SPEAKERS: Andrzej Walicki (Warsaw) Bernard Marchadier (Paris) Fr. Georgy Orekhanov (Moscow) Regula Zwahlen (Fribourg) ACADEMIC BOARD: Teresa Obolevitch (Krakow) Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen (Granada) Paweł Rojek (Krakow) CONFERENCE SECRETARY: Olga Tabatadze (Granada) Gennadii Aliaiev Poltava Yuri Kondratuk National Technical University, Ukraine THE TRUTH OF PATRIOTISM OR THE PATRIOTISM OF THE TRUTH What does it make the inner tension of the title question? It is obvious—at least for rational thinking—that the truth is a predicate that describes the universal, as the patriotism is the one that describes the individual or group. There is only one truth, but there are many pa- triotisms. Within this coordinate system, we should rather talk about the patriotism of the truth: as the universal bears greater value than individual, so, first, one should be a patriot of the truth, and only thereafter a patriot of a group (the group is not necessarily a people, a nation, or a state). The patriotism of the truth is the true patriotism, as it comprises in itself or replaces itself (or subordinates under itself) the patriotism of a group as it is com- monly understood. Thus, we can read and interpret the famous words of Peter Chaadaev that the love of the truth is much more beautiful than the love of the Fatherland.
    [Show full text]
  • A Short History of Russian Literature
    CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Short history of Russian iiterature 3 1924 026 645 790 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026645790 1 A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE Translated from the Russian OF SHAKHNOVSKI With a Supplementary Chapter bringing the work down to date (written specially for this book) BY SERGE TOMKEYEFF London KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., Ltd. New York : E. P. BUTTON & Co. 193 f\.S^1\3 4- V. ^.. \'-"f .. CONTENTS PAGE Introductory . i Chap I. Oral and written literature . 3 II. The beginnings of written literature . 9 III. The monuments of the twelfth century r8. IV. The monuments of the thirteenth century 22 V. The monuments of the fourteenth century 24 VI. The modern period . 30 VII. The epoch of reconstruction . 36 VIII. Sumar6kov and the literary writers under Catherine II . 46 IX Von Visin 52 X. The first Russian periodicals . 62 XI. N. Y. Karamzln . 66 XII. Zhuk6vski 74 XIII. Kryl6v and the journalism of the Romantic epoch . 81 XIV. A. S. Pushkin and his followers . 86 XV. Griboiedov, Lermontov . 99 XVI. Gogol 106 XVII. Modem Literature : The Schellingists, Slavophils and Westemizers . 117 XVIII. Later poets and the great novelists . 123 XIX. Grigor6vich and other novelists . 131 XX. Russian Literature from Leo Toistoy to the present date . 138 (Writter. by Serge Tomkeyeff./ INTRODUCTORY. The history of literature presents a progressive develop- ment of the art of writing in every country, and is corre- lated with the culture of the people.
    [Show full text]
  • The Arts in Russia Under Stalin
    01_SOVMINDCH1. 12/19/03 11:23 AM Page 1 THE ARTS IN RUSSIA UNDER STALIN December 1945 The Soviet literary scene is a peculiar one, and in order to understand it few analogies from the West are of use. For a vari- ety of causes Russia has in historical times led a life to some degree isolated from the rest of the world, and never formed a genuine part of the Western tradition; indeed her literature has at all times provided evidence of a peculiarly ambivalent attitude with regard to the uneasy relationship between herself and the West, taking the form now of a violent and unsatisfied longing to enter and become part of the main stream of European life, now of a resentful (‘Scythian’) contempt for Western values, not by any means confined to professing Slavophils; but most often of an unresolved, self-conscious combination of these mutually opposed currents of feeling. This mingled emotion of love and of hate permeates the writing of virtually every well-known Russian author, sometimes rising to great vehemence in the protest against foreign influence which, in one form or another, colours the masterpieces of Griboedov, Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky, Herzen, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Blok. The October Revolution insulated Russia even more com- pletely, and her development became perforce still more self- regarding, self-conscious and incommensurable with that of its neighbours. It is not my purpose to trace the situation histori- cally, but the present is particularly unintelligible without at least a glance at previous events, and it would perhaps be convenient, and not too misleading, to divide its recent growth into three main stages – 1900–1928; 1928–1937; 1937 to the present – artifi- cial and over-simple though this can easily be shown to be.
    [Show full text]
  • Rfe/Ri. Inc. Broadcast Archive Daily
    RFE/RI. INC. DAILY BROADCAT RL- QuAci-ct,v) BROADCAST ARCHIVE ANALYSES 9g6 ickA4 a JAN vAK/ RADIO FREE EUROPE RADIO UBERTY RADIO LIBERTY DAILY BROADCAST ANALYSIS RUSSIAN SERVICE (For a summary of the news coverage used by the Russian Service please see the end of the DBA.) (An * next to a program indicates designated for translation.) Russian Daily Broadcast Analysis Wednesday, 1 January 1986 D. Felton A. USSR TOPICS -- POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL: 1. Soviet-US Relations. STARTING THE DAY (Voznesenskaya, M 5) recalled the case of American schoolgirl Samantha Smith, who was invited to the USSR after having written a letter to the Kremlin asking why the Soviet leaders were threatening the world with war and who was killed last August in an air crash. The program spoke of a propaganda maneuver by the USSR, and said that while she might have been a source of irritation upon returning home, like other pacifists in the West she was not subjected to any persecution, in contrast to pacifists in such countries as the USSR and the GDR. Commenting on an article in Pionengmya Pravda suggesting that the air crash could have been the work of "enemies" who saw Samantha Smith as an "agent of Moscow," the program said the international declaration of children's rights describes instilling in children a hatred of other peoples as a crime and cited the Bible that those whom miskod children should have a millstone tied around their neck and be thrown into the sea. 2. Dissidents and Human Rights. In HUMAN RIGHTS (Alexeyeva, NY 20), a RERUN from December 26, veteran human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva commented on the deteriorating human rights situation in the USSR in 1985.
    [Show full text]
  • The Trauma of Stalinism Narrated in Varlam T. Shalamov's Kolymskie Rasskazy : Missiological Implications for Contemporary Russia
    Andrews University Digital Commons @ Andrews University Dissertations Graduate Research 2008 The Trauma of Stalinism Narrated in Varlam T. Shalamov's Kolymskie Rasskazy : Missiological Implications for Contemporary Russia Yuri N. Drumi Andrews University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations Part of the European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Political History Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation Drumi, Yuri N., "The Trauma of Stalinism Narrated in Varlam T. Shalamov's Kolymskie Rasskazy : Missiological Implications for Contemporary Russia" (2008). Dissertations. 40. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/40 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Research at Digital Commons @ Andrews University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Andrews University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your interest in the Andrews University Digital Library of Dissertations and Theses. Please honor the copyright of this document by not duplicating or distributing additional copies in any form without the author’s express written permission. Thanks for your cooperation. ABSTRACT THE TRAUMA OF STALINISM NARRATED IN VARLAM T. SHALAMOV'S KOLYMSKIE RASSKAZY: MISSIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA by Yuri N. Drumi Adviser: Rudi Maier ABSTRACT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH Dissertation Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary Title: THE TRAUMA OF STALINISM NARRATED IN VARLAM T. SHALAMOV'S KOLYMSKIE RASSKAZY: MISSIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA Name of researcher: Yuri N. Drumi Name and degree of faculty adviser: Rudi Maier, Ph.D. Date completed: April 2008 Stalinism and the punitive system of the Gulag left an indelible stamp on the entire social matrix of Russia.
    [Show full text]
  • Dostoevskyand Shalamov: Orpheus and Pluto
    The Dostoevsky Journal:An Independent Review, 1 (2000), 147-57. ELENA MIKHAILIK DOSTOEVSKYAND SHALAMOV: ORPHEUS AND PLUTO "When I've fallen to the very bottom I heard a tap from below." Stanislav E. Lez In Varlam Shalamov's story "The Funeral Oration" two political prisoners heaving stone in a Kolyma goldmine compare their lot to that of the Decembrists sent to the Siberian mines more than a century ago. I told Fediakhin about the quotas the Decembrists were assigned at Ner­ chinsk according to the "Memories of Maria Volkonskaia," - three poods 1 of , ore per worker. - And pow much would our quota weigh, Vasilii Petrovich? - Fediakhin ~~ . I did a calculation - it was about eight hundred poods. - Well, Vasilii Petrovich, look how the quotas have gone up....2 If one was to choose a single quotation that defines Shalamov's manifold rela-: . tionship with Dostoevsky it will probably be this one, the passage where Dosto­ evsky's name is not even mentioned. And yet it neatly captures the nature of the distance between the House ofthe Dead, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and the -Kolyma Tales. The production quotas have been increased 266.666666666(6) times. This radical change in the limits of human experience sets the framework within which Shalamov sees Dostoevsky's philosophical ideas and creative de- vices. : Here I would like to say·that in my opinion the whole scope of Shalamov's Dostoevsky connections cannot be covered within the boundaries of a single arti-. cle or even a series of articles. Therefore the aim of this article is to define several interesting aspects of the problem and tentatively suggest the ways, along which those aspects might be explored.
    [Show full text]