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The Creation of a 'People's Hero': Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev and The The Creation of a ‘People’s Hero’: Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev and the Fate of Soviet Popular History By Jason Read Morton A dissertion submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair Professor Victoria Frede Professor Anne Nesbet Spring 2017 i Abstract The Creation of a ‘People’s Hero: Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev and the Fate of Soviet Popular History By Jason Read Morton Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair This dissertation is an analysis of the relationship between grand narratives and individual identity in the Soviet context analyzed through the popular mythology of Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev. It uses the concept of heroism effectively to bridge the divide between the collective and the discrete historical actor. The category of the hero, long central to historical narratives, has garnered scant attention in recent years. Contemporary history, which tends to emphasize the ‘bottom-up,’ has rightly pushed back against the representation of history as the province of powerful individuals. Yet heroism, too, can be explored from a bottom-up perspective by analyzing individual and popular engagement with, and influence on, heroic ideals. The popular mythology of Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev is without an equivalent in Soviet History and offers critical insight into the dialectics of popular legitimacy in the world’s first socialist state. In Russia today, the widespread proliferation of images and stories about the peasant partisan leader, who went on to command a Bolshevik division during the Russian Civil War before dying in battle in 1919, is known as the “Chapaev Phenomenon.” Chapaev’s status in Russian memory is second only to that of Lenin, both in prevalence and longevity. Unlike Lenin, however, Chapaev was neither a founder of the state nor even a representative of its political class. On the contrary, his social origins in the peasantry made him politically suspect during his lifetime. And yet Chapaev’s popular appeal not only supported every political regime since the 1920s, it has endured well beyond the collapse of the Soviet state. In five chapters, my dissertation explains why. Centering on the concept of myth, it focuses on representations of Chapaev as a ‘people’s hero’ to explain how an individual became a cultural icon central to the self-representation of the Soviet state, and why a multitude of individuals appropriated this myth, building it into their own lives. Historically significant not only for its longevity, but for the cultural importance of the works it has spawned, Chapaev’s lives and afterlives inspired some of the most influential artistic and literary documents of the Soviet era, in some cases with heavy funding by the state. Nevertheless, beginning in the 1960s, he became a central figure in the irreverent jokes about the regime prominent in late Soviet culture. Paradoxically, these jokes underscored the willingness of Soviet citizens to make an ideological hero their own. Chapaev’s popularity ultimately transcended the collapse of the state that spawned it, enduring to become a condensed metaphor for Soviet History itself. ii To Helen, Nora, and Ava: past, present, and future iii Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1—An Unlikely Hero: The Ambivalent Orgins of a Soviet Icon………………………11 Chapter 2—The Absence of Anna: ‘Real Life,’ Art, and the Creation of a Socialist Realist Prototype………………………………………………………………………………………...35 Chapter 3—A Film for the Entire Proletariat: Chapaev, Cinema, and the Historical Aesthetics of Stalinism…………………………………………………………………………………………70 Chapter 4—A Home for the Hero: Cheboksary and the Fate of the Soviet Homeland………...104 Chapter 5—Vasilii Ivanovich and Pet’ka Save the Galaxy: Chapaev as Soviet History……....134 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...167 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………179 iv Acknowledgements Above all, I would like to thank my amazing committee. Such thanks are often a formality, but I have the privilege of really meaning it. Yuri Slezkine has been been an ideal advisor, allowing me the freedom to go my own way, while always being there when I got lost. Knowing that he believed in the project was sometimes all I had. Victoria Frede is an editor without equal. I do not know how many people will actually read this dissertation, but I do know that she has read it many times over and the final product is much better for it. Anne Nesbet is an inspiration, as a scholar and a writer. Studying film with her made me love learning again. I will try to bask in the joy when I can. UC Berkeley has been an incomporable academic environment. Numerous faculty members generously gave of their time and insight when they were under no obligation to do so. Thanks especially to John Connelly, Eric Naiman, and Irina Paperno for their valuable time and feedback. The Russian history cohort at Berkeley, past, present, and future, is the best group of people anywhere, and the Russian History Kruzhok is as good as academic endeavor gets. Charles Shaw let us squat with him in Moscow, Eric Johnson went on many adventures, Brandon Schechter taught us the value of tradition, Mirjam Voerkelius provided much needed structure. Many others read this dissertation in various stages and gave great feedback: thanks to those above, as well as to Bathsheba Demuth, Rhiannon Dowling, Katherine Zubovich, Joseph Kellner, Joy Neumeyer, and anyone else I have inexcusably forgotten. This dissertation would not have been possible without the Fulbright Student Grant, the UC Berkeley Regents’ Intern Fellowship, and funding from the UC Berkeley History Department. I am honored to be a product of public education. Last in order, but never importance, my girls. Thank you Nora and Ava. You suffered through this as much as I did, often without the benefit of knowing why. Thank you to Ashley and Kiki for being cats when we needed them. And thank you Helen Morton, for giving me a fascination with the past. v Archive Abbreviations Russian State Military Archive, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA) Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no- politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI) Russian State Library Manuscript Research Division, Nauchno-issledovatel’skii otdel rukopisei (NIOR) Central Military Museum of the Russian Federation Document Division, Dokumental’nyi otdel tsentral’nogo muzeia vooruzhennyx sil Rossiiskoi federatsii (DOTsMVSRF) Institute of Russian History, Institut rossiiskoi istorii nauchno-issledovatel’skii institut Rossiiskoi akademii nauk (NA IRI-RAN) State Archive of the Chuvash Republic, Gosudarnyi arkhiv Chuvashskoi Respubliki (GACHR). Chuvash Regional Museum of Local Historty, Chuvashskii kraevedcheskii muzei (ChKM) Saratov Regional Museum of Local History, Saratovskii oblastnoi muzei kraevedeniia (SOMK) 1 Introduction The phenomenon of popular heroism strikes at the heart of the modern era. During the twentieth century, the increasing emphasis placed on ‘the people’ as key to the legitimacy—real or symbolic—of political systems, and on ‘popular tastes’ as key to mass media productions, meant that individuals who figuratively embodied this powerful and anonymous collective were accorded ever greater significance. Popular heroes claimed to speak for the silent majority, but what gave their voices authenticity? While the modern era has seen many variants of popular heroism, the term ‘people’s hero’ was most often met in authoritarian, usually Communist, societies. Were these figures merely proxies for the top-down transmission of official values? Where do the expressions of the enthusiasm for them, manifested in folklore, fiction, and film, fall on the spectrum between genuine and feigned? All popular heroes depend on writers, actors, filmmakers, and tellers of tales and jokes to perpetuate their stories, yet each story morphs with each retelling. In the context of a strictly regulated society, the Soviet Union, where the nature of popular sovereignty was fiercely contested, these dynamics were particularly poignant. The developing story of Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev, a ‘people’s hero’ of unprecedented success, is therefore a matter of great historical significance. Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev is without an equivalent in Soviet history. In Russia today, the immense cultural production surrounding the peasant partisan leader, who died fighting for the Bolsheviks in 1919, is known as the ‘Chapaev Phenomenon.’ Chapaev’s mythology was critical to the development of Soviet culture from its earliest moments, yet he was far from an obvious Soviet hero. The Soviet Union was founded on the principles of Marxism, a socio- economic theory which privileged the urban industrial proletariat and envisioned cities and factories as the landscapes of the future. Soviet heroes, especially in the initial stages of the culture, tended to be literate, politically conscious, industrial workers. Chapaev, by contrast, was an emphatic representative of the rural periphery: in many ways the antithesis of the Soviet ideal. And yet, in terms of longevity and flexibility, his popular appeal surpassed that of any other Soviet hero: enduring well beyond the collapse of the Soviet
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