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The Empire Strikes Back: How Right-Wing Nationalists Tried to Recapture Russian Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Kathleen Parthe
Kathleen Parthe*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, Rochester, New York
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Extract

This article attempts to reconstruct the khod myshleniia (thought process) of the ultra-nationalist, ultra-conservative camp, not just because it is interesting in and of itself but also because of the way that some of their ideas, concerns, and ways of seeing Russia and the world are shared by a growing number of people in the middle of the political spectrum. The extremists' ideas about russifikatsiia may not spread very far, but russkost' is a powerful and attractive concept.

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Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 601 - 624
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. “Imperiia! Ia tvoi pevets … !” from a series of Kuniaev poems published in Den', 1993: 20 (23-29 March): 7.Google Scholar

2. Laqueur, Walter, Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extreme Right in Russia (NY: Harper Collins, 1993), 130.Google Scholar

3. Berdyaev, Nicolas, The Russian Idea, tr. French, R. M. (Boston: Beacon, 1962), 27.Google Scholar

4. Consider the expression “Sviato mesto pusto ne byvaet” (A sacred space doesn't stay empty for long) and folk and dual-faith beliefs about space (and time) being either chistyi (pure) or nechistyi (impure); a marked space or time is unlikely to become neutral.Google Scholar

5. This dilemma is discussed by Walter Laqueur in “From Russia With Hate,” The New Republic, Feb. 5, 1990: 24 [21–25]. See, also, his book Black Hundred, 127-132. Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs has been criticized as being amusing, but Russophobic. See Iurii Arkhipov, “Ovtsy i kozlishcha (Iz dnevnika kritika),” Moskva, 1992: 7-8 (July-August): 143 [142–144].Google Scholar

6. This anecdote is courtesy of Vladimir Krutikov.Google Scholar

7. Sorokin, Valentin, “Nas oni doprashivaiut, a sami svoi khvosty priachut” [They interrogate us, but hide their own tails], Moskovskii literator, July 1992 (25): 3 [3–4]. See also: Viktor Astaf'ev, “Perepiska iz dvukh uglov” (the Astafiev-Eidelman correspondence of August-September 1986), Sintaksis, 17 (1987): 85 [80–89]. Vladimir Bondarenko called foreign judges on the Booker Prize selection committee for 1992 inoplanetane and their local “collaborators” diadi Tomy, and added that calling this a prize for “a work written in Russian” (and not for “Russian literature”) was a “racist” move, although he assures his readers that this is not a question of nationality but of spirituality and russkost'. See his “Literaturnye rasisty,” Den' 20–26 December 1992: 7.Google Scholar

8. Bondarenko, V., “Literaturnye rasisty.” Bondarenko complains that Jews in the first wave of emigration felt themselves to be part of a unified Russian cultural diaspora, but they now acted like a separate group. “It was they who introduced the term ’Russian-language literature‘ in order to distinguish it from that which was simply Russian”; V. Bondarenko, “Sredi druzei i vragov,” Den', 1992: 40 (October 4-10): 7. Mark Liubomudrov attributes the distinction between “sobstvennaia russkaia literatura” (true Russian literature) and “literatura na russkom iazyke” (literature in Russian) to the conservative nationalist critic Iurii Seleznev, who died in 1984. Mark Liubomudrov, “Izvlechem li uroki? (O russkom teatre i ne tol'ko o nem),” Nash sovremennik, 1989 (2): 172 [170–183].Google Scholar

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10. This term comes from Rosalind Krauss, “Postructuralism and the Paraliterary” in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 292-93. I am using my understanding of this concept in the context of Russian literature and the literary-political process in my second book Dangerous Texts: The Russian Canon in Paraliterary Space (forthcoming).Google Scholar

11. Cherniavsky, Mikhail, Tsar and People. Studies in Russian Myths, second ed. (NY: Random House, 1969), Chapter 1.Google Scholar

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14. Other similar commentary has been published since 1985. See, for example, the republished essays from the 1930s of the exiled philosopher Ivan Il'in, in which the author goes to great lengths to argue that Gannibal had no influence on Pushkin's appearance or personality. D'in, Ivan A., Odinokii khudozhnik. Stat'i, rechi, lektsii (M.: Iskusstvo, 1993): 70-1. Elsewhere, though, Il'in clearly states that he is happy to count as Russian poets those of Jewish, German, and other backgrounds (192). See also: Granovskaia, N. N., Rod Pushkinykh miatezhnyi. Iz istorii roda Aleksandra Sergeevicha Pushkina (St. P.: “Iliad,” 1992), which begins with a complaint that the exotic Gannibal has unjustly overshadowed the poet's Russian ancestors.Google Scholar

15. See “Perepiska iz dvukh uglov,” 85.Google Scholar

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17. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, “Koleblet tvoi trenozhnik,” Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniia, 1984 (142): 151 [133–152]. I am grateful to Catharine Nepomnyashchy for first bringing this article to my attention.Google Scholar

18. Igor' Shararevich, “Fenomen emigratsii,” Literaturnaia Rossiia, 1989: 36 (8 September): 5. For a full discussion of the reception of Strolls With Pushkin, see Nepomnyashchy, C., “Andrei Sinyavsky's ’Return‘ to the Soviet Union,” Formations, 6: 1 (Spring 1991): 24–44, and her forthcoming book on Tertz (Yale University Press).Google Scholar

19. “Irony is the faithful companion of unbelief and doubt; it vanishes as soon as there appears a faith that does not tolerate sacrilege.” See Abram Tertz (— Andrei Siniavskii), “On Socialist Realism” in “The Trial Begins” and “On Socialist Realism,” tr. by Hayward, Max and Dennis, George (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 199. Tertz says that Pushkin, Lermontov, and Blok all make extensive use of irony, which is itself ironic since they are among the idols of the nationalist right.Google Scholar

20. The murder of poet-rock singer Igor' Talkov in August 1991 fit very neatly into this paradigm; a suspect was held and then released, which caused great consternation in the conservative press.Google Scholar

21. Radzishevskii, V., “Esenin: samoubiistvo ili ubiistvo?,” LG, 1993: 27 (7 July): 3.Google Scholar

22. “In 1981 Nash sovremennik was severely attacked; Iurii Seleznev, the young leader of the Russian patriots was deprived of work, and, in essence, condemned to death.” Aleksandr Kazinstev, “Pridvornye dissidenty i ’Pogibshee pokolenie‘,” Nash sovremennik, 1991 (3): 173 [171–176]. John Dunlop discusses the Nash sovremennik affair in The New Russian Nationalism (Armonk, NY: Praeger, 1985), 19–25. Mark Liubomudrov hints as much about Vampilov in “Izvlechem li uroki?” 173. This reasoning is applied not only to the past but to the present state of affairs as well. An attack on the political statements (or publicistic fiction) of such writers as Valentin Rasputin or Vasily Belov, or the delayed return of Solzhenitsyn's work to Russia is seen as a way to keep Russian culture and the Russian people weak. See, for example, “Obrashchenie k chitateliu,” a letter signed by the editorial board of Literaturnyi Irkutsk, Baiborodin, A., Tenditnik, N. and others, Literaturnyi Irkutsk, December 1989.Google Scholar

23. “Esenin was strangled by a pack of predatory invaders. The same occupying hordes killed Blok by starvation. They shot Mayakovsky. And naïve Talkov, who had just begun to see things clearly, was done away with by a scoundrel who then fled to Israel.” Sorokin, V., “Nas oni doprashivaiut,” 3.Google Scholar

24. Boym, Svetlana, Death in Quotation Marks. Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991), 4. The author restricts her investigation to poets because “since Romanticism, the poet has been the primary example of the intersection of work and life and its poetic mythification” (11). It is certainly true that virtually all the necro-myths that figure so prominently on the russkost' agenda concern poets. See also the 1993 (29) issue of Ogonek featuring a previously unknown contemporary description of Mayakovsky's death and funeral; the cover, designed by Andrei Voznesenskii reads, “Poet + Pulia—populiarnost'” [“A Poet + A Bullet = Popularity”].CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. , Boym, 6.Google Scholar

26. “Russian society took advantage of the first opportunity to gain a particular and effective advocacy for itself with the new and all-powerful Lord of the Russian people,” Cherniavsky, Michael, Tsar and People, 9.Google Scholar

27. This is taken from Cross', Samuel H. translation of the Primary Chronicle, partially reprinted in: Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles and Tales, ed. by Serge Zenkovsky, rev. edition (NY: E. P. Dutton, 1974), 105 [101–105].Google Scholar

28. , Cherniavsky, Tsar and People, 6.Google Scholar

29. Fedotov, G. P., Sviatye drevnei Rusi (XXVII st.) (Paris, YMCA Press, 1931), 32.Google Scholar

30. , Cherniavsky, Tsar and People, 11, 13.Google Scholar

31. Fedotov, G. P., The Russian Religious Mind: Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 110. Since Fedotov wrote his book, Nicholas II and his family have received official ecclesiastical attention, first in the Church abroad and then in Russia, as well as stimulating a great upsurge of popular interest after 1985. The remains of Nicholas, Alexandra, and three daughters were identified by a British-Russian forensic team in July 1993. The newspaper Den' has called repeatedly for the full canonization of the Tsar.Google Scholar

32. Zuev, Nikolai, “Kto vinoven v gibeli poeta?” NS, 1989 (6): 138–139.Google Scholar

33. The literature on Pushkin is vast and the poet's attitude to those at court is referred to in many places, for instance, in Victor Terras, A History of Russian Literature (New Haven: Yale UP, 1991), 204.Google Scholar

34. Glushkova, Tat'iana, “Smert' poeta,” Den' 1993: 20 (23-29 May): 6. The following two paragraphs summarize Glushkova's analysis of the Lermontov poem.Google Scholar

35. In this context, see Soloukhin's remarks on the examination of the remains of the tsar and his family. “There is no need of ‘versions’ and ‘expertise’: they are dead, they are martyrs, they are saints. Do not disturb their memory with ‘versions,’ ‘expertise,’ and various conjectures. That is a petty and unworthy activity. “Liana Polukhina, “Sobesednik na pominkakh” [an interview with Vladimir Soloukhin], LG, 1992: 48 (25 Nov. 1992): 5. The anti-cosmopolitan articles of the late 1940s use very much the same language as contemporary articles from the nationalist right, e.g., Dokusov, “Protiv klevety na velikikh russkikh pisatelei,” which calls offending critics bukvoedy, “pedants” (literally, “letter-eaters”) and derides the scholarly dissection of Russia's great literature.Google Scholar

36. Soloukhin, Vladimir, “Pokhoroniat, zaroiut gluboko … Nekotorye soobrazheniia v sviazi s neob'iasnennoi smert'iu Aleksandra Bloka,” Literaturnaia Rossiia, 1992: 4 (24 Jan.): 15. This article was cited by critic Andrei Turkov as one of the most depressing literary events of 1992 in “Zdes' nuzhen golos. Kritiki o literature v godu minuvshem i v godu nastupivshim,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1993: 3 (11 Jan.): 7.Google Scholar

37. Maksimov, D., “Memoria. O perenesenii prakha Al. Bloka,” Literaturnoe obozrenie, 1987 (5): 65–66. The original grave was in the Smolenskoe Cemetery, which was supposedly scheduled for destruction as part of a construction project. The remains were transferred to Volkovskoe Cemetery (Literatorskie mostki) on 26 September, 1944 through the efforts of a professor of literature at the Leningrad Teacher's Institute in order to save them from disappearing completely (which Soloukhin fails to mention when quoting from this memoir). The Smolenskoe—and Blok's original grave site—are still intact.Google Scholar

38. Natal'ia Egorova in a roundtable discussion led by Bondarenko, Vladimir, “Posle pogorel'shchiny,” Den', 1993: 8 (26 Feb.-6 March): 7 [6–7].Google Scholar

39. Historian Sergei Shvedov speaks of the “carefully cultivated version of Esenin's murder” which has received support from a number of literary scholars and certain representatives of the Orthodox church. Myths about the “ritual” murder of important cultural and historical figures by outsiders, Shvedov reminds the reader, can garner significant support in times of upheaval. See Shvedov, S., ’“Oglobli vzletiat,‘ ili logika pravykh,” Ogonek, 1991: 35 (August 24–31): 9–11.Google Scholar

40. David Shepherd paraphrases a 1978 interview, in which writer Leonid Leonov revealed that in researching Moscow's criminal underworld during the NEP period for his novel The Thief, he was often accompanied by the poet Sergei Esenin, who served as a prototype for the character of Don'ka, the highly sexed criminal poet. Shepherd, David, Beyond Metafiction. Self-Consciousness in Soviet Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 41–42, ft. 39. This is precisely the kind of information that the contemporary followers of Esenin must ignore, reinterpret, or undermine.Google Scholar

41. Chekhonadskii, Iurii and Prokushev, Iurii, “Esenin Segodnia, zavtra i vsegda,” Literaturnaia Rossiia, 1992: 39 (September 25): 10–11. See also, Sergei Kuniaev, “Zolotaia sorvi-golova,” Sovetskaia Rossiia, 3 October, 1992: 3. Kuniaev offers a list of possible and acceptable deaths for the poet: “Esenin might have gotten a bullet in the brain or a knife in his back. He might have perished under the wheels of a train, or he might have drunk a glass of wine, poisoned by a ‘well-wisher.’ He might have been consumed by Spanish 'flu, or have fallen into an abyss. There is only one thing he could not have done—and that is to kill himself.” There is a curious footnote to Esenin's life and death. His Jewish wife Zinaida Raikh, whom he left for Isadora Duncan, soon afterwards married Vsevolod Meyerhold, one of the cultural figures most hated by the right. Meyerhold was arrested in June 1939 and executed the following year; Raikh was found brutally murdered in July 1939, a crime which was never seriously investigated or solved. The death of Meyerhold was justified by Mark Liubomurov as a fitting retribution for having destroyed the traditional Russian theater. See “Agoniia nigilizma (Puti rossiiskogo avangarda),” Molodaia gvardiia, 1990 (11): 261-282. One of Esenin's sons (not by his marriage to Raikh) was executed in the late 1930s, and his sister and her husband were arrested.Google Scholar

42. , Radzishevskii, 3.Google Scholar

43. Khlystalov, Eduard, Taina gostinitsy ’Angleter‘ (Moscow: “Rossiia molodaia,” 1991), 97.Google Scholar

44. Lystsov, Ivan, “Ubiistvo Esenina,” Molodaia gvardiia 1990 (10): 274 [251–274]; and Khlystalov, Taina gostinitsy, 98.Google Scholar

45. Sorokin, Valentin, “Poet, narod, Rossiia,” Moskovskii literator, 1990: 40 (26 October): 3-4. See also Sorokin, “Nas oni doprashivaiut, a sami svoi khvosty priachut,” 3–4.Google Scholar

46. , Lystsov, 254.Google Scholar

47. , Boym, 168.Google Scholar

48. A similar contrast is made in Lapin, Boris and Tenditnik, Nadezhda, “Deti Arbata i Deti Rossii,” Sibir', 1989 (3): 113–125, although the article concentrates not so much on suffering as on the vast differences between the two groups of writers represented by the terms “children of the Arbat” and “children of Russia.”Google Scholar

49. The suffering of living conservative writers is elevated to a martyrdom (Rasputin, Solzhenitsyn). Soloukhin has described his own troubles in contrast to what he sees as exaggerated claims of suffering by others. He complains about past reprimands and censorship of his texts, and claims that an order (unfulfilled) went out to severely punish him in 1985. As to his part in condemning Pasternak at a Writers' Union meeting, he blames those who allowed him to go astray, and Pasternak himself, for not having the courage to stand firm. See Polukhina's interview with Soloukhin, “Sobesednik na pominkakh,” 5.Google Scholar

50. “Dlia unichtozheniia naroda … dostatochno ego obezlichit' … a litso naroda, kak izvestnoego kul'tura.” Igor' Viktorov, “Ubiistvo,” Zavtra, 1994: 31 (August): 6.Google Scholar

51. “The nineteenth-century romantic stereotypes still pertain not only in belles-lettres but among ethnographers as well. ’Ethnic‘ is passed off as ‘national,’ and ‘political’ merges with ‘genetic.’” Vladimir Zviniatskovskii, “Partiinaia literatura bez partiinoi organizatsii,” Znamia , 1992 (2): 235 [226–237].Google Scholar

52. In an article on émigré writers, Galina Litvinova quotes poet Igor' Severianin: “Rodit'sia russkim slishkom malo,/ Im nado byt', im nado stat'” (It is not enough to be born Russian,/ It's something you have to be, something you have to become). See, Litvinova, G., “Russkie amerikantsy,” Nash sovremennik , 1992 (12): 123 [123–134].Google Scholar

53. Lzhe- is a highly charged prefix. While it could describe someone of little talent, not worthy of being called a poet, it also carries the sense of illegitimate status, hence, a pretender to a role, or a usurper of a powerful position. In Russian cultural memory, lzhe- is inevitably associated with Lzhe-Dmitrii (the False Dimitrii), a name applied to three pretenders to the throne during the Time of Troubles, each of whom claimed to be the son of Ivan the Terrible, rumored to have been murdered by order of Boris Godunov in 1591. Even the canonization of Prince Dmitrii of Uglich in 1606 and the bringing of his remains to Moscow did not contain the spread of False Dmitriis. Voinovich and Sinyavsky/Tertz have both satirized the role of pretenders in Russia at times of great national upheaval, the former in the 1972 story “Skurlatsky, Man of Letters” and the second Chonkin novel, and the latter in the fourth chapter of the 1983 novel Goodnight! (which features a False Stalin, False Lenin, and False Kirov).Google Scholar

54. Khatiushin, V., “O lzhepoetakh i russkoi poezii,” Molodaia gvardiia, 1991 (1): 264, 266 [258–275].Google Scholar

55. “Vozvrashchenie Rossii (Beseda Anatoliia Baiborodina s Valentinom Grigor'evichem Rasputynym),” Sibir', 1991 (1): 31 [3–34]. In the same article, Rasputin says that there is a strong case being made for the canonization of Dostoevsky. Another article declares that “Russian literature is a liturgical process” and decries the “Petrine Western avant garde “ that brought “contemporary literature” to Russia, weakening the “invisible spiritual dome” of traditional Russian writing. Grigorii Iunin, “Ten' ruki s gusinym perom,” Den', 1992: 50 (13-19 December): 6.Google Scholar

56. The quality of “spirituality” in Russian literature was devalued by the indiscriminate use of this term by official champions of Socialist Realism.Google Scholar

57. Krupin, Vladimir, who in the early 1980s admitted that with Village Prose on the wane he was not sure what to write about, has emerged as a leading advocate of an Orthodox-centered literature. “Russian literature supports Russian Orthodoxy. That's the way it was and that's the way it should be. But for several centuries our literature has been rushing around amongst various subjects and genres, and has become repetitious. … It's moved away from the tradition of Nestor and Hilarion, away from words coinciding with their meanings. The books keep getting longer, but they make less and less sense.” See Gradova, Elena, “Knigi vse tolshche, smysla vse men'she” (An Interview with Vladimir Krupin), Literaturnaia gazeta, 1992: 42 (14 October): 3. Nestor (1056-c.1113) is a monk known for the writing of chronicles and saints' lives. Hilarion is an eleventh-century metropolitan of Kiev who is known primarily for “The Sermon on Law and Grace,” which strongly favors the Christian concept of grace over a perceived Jewish emphasis on law.Google Scholar

58. In his literary memoirs The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn composed a sort of “saint's life” for himself, in which each text, written and preserved with great difficulty, is called a podvig, not achieved for personal glory but for all Russians who suffered for Russia in the twentieth century, especially those who perished in the Gulag. See Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf, tr. by Wiletts, H. T. (NY: Harper and Row, 1981). For a related discussion of pravedniki, see my article, “The Righteous Brothers (and Sisters) of Contemporary Russian Literature,” World Literature Today, 67: 1 (Winter 1993): 91–99.Google Scholar

59. See Seleznev, Iurii, Glazami naroda (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1986), 109.Google Scholar

60. Sorokin, Valentin, “Nas oni doprashivaiut,” 3.Google Scholar

61. The uproar over the English-funded Booker Prize awarded to Mark Kharitonov in December 1992 is indicative of this line of thought. Vladimir Bondarenko cannot imagine how Eurocentric atheists and Protestants—along with their Russian collaborators—can hope to judge what is best in Russian literature. “Neither Viktor Astafiev nor Vladimir Sokolov will ever get a Nobel Prize, no matter how fine their works are, and despite the fact that they represent the very summit of Russian literature.” In Bondarenko, “Literaturnye rasisty.” For similar sentiments see Tat'iana Glushkova's remarks in the roundtable discussion “Posle pogerel'shchiny,” Den', 1993 (8): 7: “And it is not for the learned rationalist to approach our mysteries!” This is, again, a rejection not simply of “alien” judgments of Russian literature, but of academic, rationalist discourse in general.Google Scholar

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63. Arkhipov, Iurii, “Ovtsy i kozlishcha,” 143.Google Scholar

64. Liubomudrov, Mark, “Izvlechem li uroki?” Nash sovremennik, 1989 (2): 173-74 [170–183]. It is argued that Western Slavists have not helped by being “duped” into championing the mastery andergraunda. See, Vladimir Bondarenko, “Fekal'nai proza Sorokina Vovy,” Den', 1992: 16 (19-25 April): 7.Google Scholar

65. See Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, “The Relentless Cult of Novelty and How it Wrecked the Century,” tr. by Ignat and Stephan Solzhenitsyn, The New York Times Book Review, 7 February, 1993: 3, 17. Sinyavsky's most important statement on Russian realism and modernism is still the essay On Socialist Realism. The two authors have debated these questions both in émigré and (after 1985) in Russian periodicals. See also: Liubomudrov, “Agoniia nigilizma”; Arkhipov, “Ovtsy i kozlishcha”; and Dale Peterson, “Solzhenitsyn Back in the USSR: Anti-Modernism in Contemporary Soviet Prose,” Berkshire Review, 1981: 64–84.Google Scholar

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67. For a discussion of “genetic memory,” see Vladimir Bondarenko, “Obretenie rodstva,” V mire knig, 1989 (7): 11–17.Google Scholar

68. For a discussion of the self-image of the derevenshchiki, see Parthe, Kathleen, Russian Village Prose: The Radiant Past (Princeton, Princeton UP, 1992), 18. On “righteousness” as a narrative mask, see Parthe, “The Righteous Brothers,” 91–99.Google Scholar

69. “Vtoraia tragediia” (an interview with Tat'iana Glushkova by Kuniaev, Sergei), Moskovskii literator, 1993: 4 (March): 6 [6–7].Google Scholar

70. Shvedov, Sergei, “ ’Oglobli vzletiat‘, ili logika pravykh,” Ogonek, 1991: 35 (24-31 August): 11 [9–11].Google Scholar

71. Tolstaia, Tatiana, “Ne mogu molchat',” Ogonek, 1990: 14 (31 March-7 April).Google Scholar

72. Voinovich, Vladimir, The Fur Hat, tr. by Brownsberger, Susan (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), 32. In the play Tribunal, Voinovich parodies—among other things—the deliberately archaic language and hypocritical behavior of an ultra-nationalist rural writer. See, Vladimir Voinovich, Tribunal (London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1985).Google Scholar

73. , Voinovich, The Fur Hat, 99.Google Scholar

74. Roziner, Feliks, Nekto Finkel'maier (London: Overseas Publication Interchange, 1981), 254–256. The translation, which condenses a passage that refers to Prebylov's regional accent and ungrammatical Russian, is taken from Felix Roziner, A Certain Finkelmeyer, tr. by Michael Heim (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 164. The novel was published in Russia shortly before the English translation came out. A 1984 lecture in New York by Joseph Brodsky used the same image to criticize “the strong tendency towards nationalistic self-appreciation” as an antidote to the “depersonalizing mass of the state” that had arisen in Russian literature in the previous decade (c. 1974-1984), especially in what Brodsky calls “peasant prose.” See Brodsky, “Catastrophes in the Air” in Less Than One. Selected Essays (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986), 294-95 [268–303].Google Scholar

75. , Roziner, A Certain Finkelmeyer, 321. Roziner's novel, under its samizdat name of Pyl' na vetru (Dust/Ashes in the Wind) received the Vladimir Dal Literary Prize in Paris in 1980, an irony, considering the nationalist right's high regard for Dal's work on Russian language and folklore.Google Scholar

76. See for example the extended debates on nationalism and traditional values in literature that took place on the pages of Literaturnaia gazeta and other periodicals during this entire period, but especially in the late sixties and again in the late seventies. This is the era in which the ideas and images of Village Prose were being turned into ideological concepts by like-minded urban critics. See Parthe, Russian Village Prose, especially 81–98 Google Scholar

77. “Klassika i my,” Moskva , 1990 (1-3).Google Scholar

78. For an excellent discussion of Jewish writers in Russia, see Nakhimovsky, Alice, Russian-Jewish Literature and Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1992).Google Scholar

79. Proposed by Zolotusskii, M. and quoted by Natal'ia Ivanova in “Russkii vopros,” Znamia, 1992 (1): 198 [191–204]. Ivanova blames this development on the anti-cosmopolitan campaign of the late forties, the Village Prose movement of the sixties and seventies, and those poets and critics who allied themselves with the rural writers. In another article, Ivanova calls the cultural chauvinists pozhilaia gvardiia (the middle-aged/elderly guard) a play on Molodaia gvardiia [The Young Guard] the journal most closely linked with national Bolshevism and neo-Stalinism). See Ivanova, “Pozhilaia gvardiia,” Sintaksis, 1989 (26): 203-209.Google Scholar

80. Zviniatskovskii, Vladimir, “Partiinaia literatura bez partiinoi organizatsii,” Znamia, 1992 (2): 233–237 [226–237].Google Scholar

81. Ageev, Aleksandr, “Varvarskaia lira. Ocherki ‘patrioticheskoi’ poezii,” Znamia, 1991 (2): 221–231.Google Scholar

82. Kuritsyn, Viacheslav, “Postmodernizm: Novaia pervobytnaia kul'tura,” Novyi mir, 1992 (2): 226 [225–239].Google Scholar

83. The Kuritsyn article discusses the importance of post-modernism. The conservative future vision of Russian literature comes from writer Iurii Kozlov's remarks at a roundtable called “Vek zolotoi eshche vernetsia,” Den' , 1992: 50 (13-19 December): 6.Google Scholar

84. Sergei Chuprinin objects to the exclusivity advocated on the right, which he sees as a move towards self-isolation. “The furthest extension of this is a ‘reservation’ for patriotic literature, voluntarily fenced off before our very eyes by those who want the exclusive right to love their Homeland, and the exclusive duty of feeling themselves to be Russian and at one with the people.” See his contribution to “Nedoskazannoe: K itogam literaturnogo goda,” Znamia, 1993 (1): 202–204 [192–204].Google Scholar

85. Sorokin, Valentin, “Svoi chuzhie,” Nash sovremennik, 1989 (9): 176 [168–178]. On the image of “borders” in Village Prose, see Parthe, Russian Village Prose, 5-7, 68–72.Google Scholar

86. Stupin, Gennadii, in “Posle pogorel'shchiny,” 6.Google Scholar

87. The reference is not merely to Odessa as a city with a large Jewish population, but to a story by Isaac Babel. See Glushkova, “Vtoraia tragediia,” 6.Google Scholar

88. Billington, James, The Icon and the Axe. An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (NY: Vintage, 1970), 368, 540.Google Scholar

89. , Ageev, “Varvarskaia lira,” 225. Ageev quotes a poem by Iurii Kuznetsov which expresses this view very strongly.Google Scholar