Revolving Beast: Identifying the Animal in post-Revolutionary Russian Literature by Eric D. Ford A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Slavic Languages and Literatures) in the University of Michigan 2016 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Sofya Khagi, Chair Associate Professor Herbert J. Eagle Professor Peggy S. McCracken Assistant Professor Benjamin B. Paloff In memory of my brother Jason Ford (1970 - 2012) ii Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been written without the support and encouragement of several people at the University of Michigan. I am especially indebted to two individuals: Herb Eagle, who served admirably as chair of the Slavic Department for the majority of my time at the university, and who gave invaluable help and advice during some particularly trying times; and Sofya Khagi, my advisor, with whom I have had the great pleasure of working over the past several years. She has been a wonderful mentor, colleague, and friend. I am deeply grateful to my other committee members, Peggy McCracken and Benjamin Paloff, who read my dissertation carefully and provided very helpful criticism and suggestions. I would also like to thank the talented and dedicated faculty of the Slavic department with whom I’ve worked as student and colleague: Olga Maiorova, Mikhail Krutikov, Tatjana Aleksić, Jindrich Toman, Svitlana Rogovyk, Nina Shkolnik, Natalia Kondrashova, Eugene Bondarenko, and Omry Ronen. Thanks also to the many fellow graduate students I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and working with: Aleksandar Bošković, Vlad Beronja, Yana Arnold, Jessica Zychowicz, Renee Scherer, Adam Kolkman, Sarah Sutter, Jodi Grieg, Marin Turk, Jamie Parsons, Olga Greco, Paulina Duda, Haley Laurila, Jason Wagner, and Grace Mahoney. Finally, I am eternally grateful to the administrative staff of the department for all of their knowledge, help, and advice: Jean McKee, Jennifer White, and Sheri Sytsema-Geiger. Thank you all. iii Table of Contents Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………………..ii Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………….………………...…..iii List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………………....v Abstract …………………………………….……………………………………………………vi Introduction ……………………………………….………….…………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Opposition. …………………………………………………………………..………19 Chapter 2: Dehumanization. ………………………………………………………………....….65 Chapter 3: Subjectivity and Value. ……………………………………………………….……107 Conclusion: (Re)seeing the Animal. ……………………………………………………….......146 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………...…152 iv List of figures Figure 1: Poster, “Za edinuiu Rossiu,” 1919. …………………………………………...………17 Figure 2: Poster, “Lev Trotskii pobivaet kontrrevoliutsiiu,” 1918. ……………………….…….18 v Abstract The early years of the Soviet Union provide a rich context in which to examine the animal question, as one in which we see a complex search for meaning and identity in the climate of war and revolution. Three writers of the time—Boris Pilnyak, Andrei Platonov, and Evgeny Zamyatin—use animal imagery in ways that both illustrate and complicate ideological and ontological tensions. They emphasize the complexity of animal imagery, and the many problematic layers of the “animal.” Challenging traditional constructs of hierarchy and value, their works engage issues of identity, the problem of dehumanization, and the question of the intrinsic value of nonhuman beings. In Chapter One, I explore the flexibility of animal imagery in constructs of human identity. In “Mother Earth” Pilnyak employs as his “hero” a misidentified fox cub to explore the estrangement and hostility between historically divided social groups. In “North” Zamyatin uses animals to explore the opposition between the primitive and the civilized, disrupting the binary construct through simultaneity and liminality. In Chapter Two, I show how Zamyatin and Platonov use the literalization of dehumanizing tropes to question essentialist notions of animality and notions of morality and progress. In “The Dragon” Zamyatin challenges to notion of “humanness” by raising a third point of contrast to the animal/human binary: the inhuman. Similarly, in “Garbage Wind” Platonov disrupts human superiority through regressive metamorphosis, and challenges the “humanity” of humans who use science to justify oppression. In Chapter Three, I examine the question of value, and the difficulty of representing a nonhuman subject whose interiority is not fully accessible to us. Pilnyak’s “A Complete Life” marginalizes the human by showing the “complete” lives of birds in the wild, free of human influence or meaning. By contrast, in “The Cow” Platonov presents the life of a cow whose value, as an agricultural resource, is limited to the products of her body. The tension created by vi these conflicting views provides a critical view of anthropocentrism, in terms of both the exploitation of living beings, and the devaluation of individual subjective lives by which such exploitation is justified. vii Introduction I. Drawing Lines. A Civil War propaganda poster from 1919 presents an image of a white medieval knight on horseback charging from the sky, about to slay a red dragon (Figure 1). The heading reads, “For United Russia,” and was designed to inspire the White Army to fight the “serpent ring” of Bolshevism that had “squeezed the heart of Russia.” It is a strong image, deliberately associating the plight of the White Army with the iconic image of St. George. While the poster’s symbolic meaning is unambiguous, the basic elements of the symbolism are not. A similar revision of the St. George image was also made earlier, in 1918, this time depicting Trotsky on horseback about to plunge a spear into a serpent’s head (Figure 2). The serpent wears a top hat and has the word “counter-revolution” written on his body. Juxtaposing these two images, we see that the knight and the serpent are the basic variables which can represent either term in a binary pair relating to values of good and evil, right and wrong, etc. While the political or ideological forces represented by the figures in the image may vary, the relationship between them is constant: the knight is always the good, while the dragon/serpent is always the evil. Animal imagery is common in propaganda because of the ease with which such imagery can access reductive cultural associations in order to position one ideology or group against another, to either valorize a hero or vilify an enemy. This ease stems from the tradition of seeing the animal according to a mode (or modes) of binary opposition, and then using this opposition to 1 inform or illustrate others. Animal imagery provides a compressed and flexible vehicle for symbolizing notions of identity, meaning, and value. While binary constructs are common across cultures and historical eras, during periods of intense social conflict, the tendency to define circumstances or people according to these constructs—old/new, right/wrong—is particularly strong. The period surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution was wrought with tension as Russia, still suffering the effects of World War I, was thrown into further conflict, and lines were continually being drawn according to class and ideology, in an effort to define and assert notions of identity and meaning during a time of great transition. Much of the literature of the period is both an exploration and a reflection of this tension, self-definition, and conflict. It was a period in which writers were still very much in the modernist current of exploration and innovation, with its preoccupation with fragmentation, discontinuity, and impermanence; and their art is both an extension and expression of the significant social and cultural changes occurring at that time. This dissertation is about the literary use of animals and animal imagery in selected stories of three important and influential Russian writers: Evgeny Zamyatin, Boris Pilnyak, and Andrei Platonov. Their work, in general, is very much a product of, and directly engages, the experience of identity-construction as it occurred in the climate and aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. The specific works to be considered here were chosen because of the way in which their use of animal imagery engages the complexity of the animal image. They all address issues of identity, meaning, and value, but they do so in a way that questions these very concepts, and the beliefs associated with them, and they do so, in part, through a use of animal imagery that draws attention to itself. They highlight the ambiguity of the animal image, the tension between the symbolic and the real, and how nonhuman animals are simultaneously figurative 2 symbols and living beings in a way that challenges or distorts our perception and understanding of either. Reading these works with attention to the animal imagery we see that they engage difficult questions about the concept of the animal as a counterpoint to the human, about the animal as a mode of generating systems of meaning, the instability of such systems, and the way in which the ideas we hold about the animal directly influence both our concept of self, and our attitudes and treatment of those we view as “other.” II. The animal read in mind and body. “The question of the animal” is very complex because the term “animal” contains multiple meanings which exist simultaneously and inform each other, often with very serious implications. The term can refer to any animate being, including humans, or it can refer to all animate beings