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The Unofficial Field of Late Soviet Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ann Komaromi
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Abstract

This article proposes a new interdisciplinary model for investigating unofficial culture and dissident social activity in the post-Stalin period. Although binary oppositions like art versus politics and unofficial versus official are recognized today to be ideologically implicated and critically outmoded, Ann Komaromi argues that they have a certain usefulness when reconceived as structural components of an autonomous unofficial field. This critical model is developed with polemical reference to Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the field of culture. The late Soviet opposition between art and politics is explored through Andrei Siniavskii's struggle with editors over the 1965 edition of Boris Pasternak's poetry and via the organization of the famous 5 December 1965 “Meeting of Openness” coordinated by Aleksandr Esenin-Vol'pin. The critical model proposed emphasizes the material history of conceptions of autonomy fundamental to the field, profiling dynamic binaries and permeable boundaries as sites of critical interest.

Type
Genealogies of Soviet Dissent
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , Winter 2007 , pp. 605 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2007

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References

I would like to thank my reviewers for their solid knowledge of the subjects and sharp critical insights.

1. See Dolinin, V. E., Ivanov, B. I., Ostanin, B. V., and Severiukhin, D. la., Samizdat Leningrada, 1950-e—1980-e: Literaturnaia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 2003)Google Scholar.

2. Mikhail Sheinker shared information about Krivulin's and Goricheva's association with an Initiative Group. Mikhail Sheinker, e-mail and telephone communication, summer 2006. In addition, two other editors of that couple's literaryjournal 37eventually left to work on dissident causes. See Krivulin's article,“'37,’ ‘Severnaia pochta,'” in Dolinin, V and Ivanov, B., Samizdat: Materialy s konferentsii “30 let nezavisimoi pechati. 1950-80 gody“ (St. Petersburg, 1993), 74–81 Google Scholar.

3. See Kulle's, Viktor review of Antologiia samizdata: Nepodtsenzurnaia literatura v SSSR, 1950-e—1980-e, ed. Igrunov, V V., comp. M. Sh. Barbakadze, 3 vols. (Moscow, 2005) in Novyi mir, 2005, no. 12:182-83Google Scholar. See the interview with Aleksandr Daniel’ at the beginning of the Antologiia for a provocative, though, I think, still implicitly limited, definition of Samizdat as “socially significant” texts diat are spontaneously reproduced (17).

4. Savitskii confines his study to the activity as mythologized by its best-known spokespersons in the Leningrad cultural underground; that is, he does not explore ties between literati and political groups. See Savitskii, Stanislav, Andegraund: Istoriia i mify Leningradskoi neofitsial'noi literatury (Moscow, 2002)Google Scholar.

5. For a strong recent example, see Yurchak, Alexei, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, 2006)Google Scholar; Oushakine, Serguei, “The Terrifying Mimicry of Samizdat,” Public Culture 13, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 191–214 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Bourdieu's book-length treatment of the emergence of the autonomous field of culture in France appeared as Les règies de I'art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris, 1992,1998). A collection of his work on culture appeared in English as The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Johnson, Randal (New York, 1993)Google Scholar. Johnson also provides a lucid introduction to key concepts (2-5).

7. Bourdieu defined a field thus: “As I use the term, a field is a separate social universe having its own laws of functioning independent of those of politics and the economy. The existence of the writer, as fact and as value, is inseparable from the existence of the literary field as an autonomous universe endowed with specific principles of evaluation of practices and works.” Bourdieu, , The Field, 162-63Google Scholar.

8. One of the most provocative points of Bourdieu's model is his reintroduction into structural analysis of the individual subject as agent on the field. Bourdieu's agent reintroduced the subject into structural analysis via his concept of habitus, referring to the dispositions inculcated by a person's social background, thus differentiating his agent from the ideal Romantic subject. See Johnson's, Randal introduction to Bourdieu, in The Field, 2 Google Scholar.

9. In the preface to Les règies, Bourdieu writes: “En réalité, comprendre la genèse sociale du champ littéraire, de la croyance qui le soutient, du jeu de langage qui s'yjoue, des intérèts et des enjeux matériels ou symboliques qui s'y engendrent, ce n'est pas sacrifier au plaisir de réduire ou de détruire” (16).

10. For example, Charles Baudelaire appears to be both unique and extremely influential, while Gustave Flaubert expresses rare insight into the social situation, according to Bourdieu's account. Bourdieu's theoretical concept of the “agent” represents his own innovative negotiation between the Scylla of Romantic individualism and the Charybdis of vulgar Marxist determinism. Bourdieu's key term for understanding the agent, an idea elaborated over several theoretical works, is habitus, the intuitive “feel for the game.” See Johnson's, introduction to The Field, 2–5 Google Scholar.

11. See also Benjamin Nathans's article in the present issue of Slavic Review.

12. This correspondence was published as “Perepiska Andreia Siniavskogo s redkollegiei serii ‘Biblioteki poeta': Izmenenie sovetskogo literaturnogo polia,” with an introduction and commentary by Komaromi, Ann, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005, no. 71: 175-99Google Scholar. The volume in question appeared as Boris Pasternak, Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy, with an introductory article by Siniavskii, A. D.; technical editor Ozerov, L. A.; general editor Orlov, V N. (Moscow, 1965)Google Scholar.

13. Rich background information on die 5 December meeting has been made available in the collection of materials, Daniel’, A. and Roginskii, A., eds., Piatoe dekabria 1965 goda v vospominaniiakh uchastnikov sobytii, materialakh Samizdata, dokumentahhpartiinykh i komsomol'skikh organizatsii i v zapiskakh Komiteta gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti v TsKKPSS (Moscow, 1995, 2005Google Scholar

14. Bourdieu, , The Field, 54 Google Scholar, and Bourdieu, , Les règies, 216 Google Scholar.

15. On the role of cultural life in the formation of an audience-oriented subjectivity, see chapter 2, “Social Structures of the Public Sphere,” in jürgen Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Burger, Thomas with Lawrence, Frederick (Cambridge, Mass., 1989)Google Scholar. Originally published as Strukturxoandel der Öffentlicheit (Neuwied am Rhein, 1962).

16. Habermas explored this breakdown in chapters 5 - 6 of The Structural Transformation. He did not treat the Soviet case in detail: his subject is western bourgeois society, and his critical background in this work is Marxist. Habermas did acknowledge, however, that “neither the liberal nor the socialist model were adequate for the diagnosis of a public sphere,” at the time of the erosion of that public sphere (140).

17. The highly persona] character of Joseph Brodsky's poetry and the value he gave to the cultivation of private or individual tastes and values is telling in this regard. See Brodsky's Nobel Speech on particularity (chastnost’) and individual aesthetic taste as a bulwark against political evil.

18. Extremely early, at the same time as there existed just a handful of independent student publications devoted to poetry, we find the uncensored bulletin Informalsiia, ed. Revol't Pimenov (Moscow, 1956-57). Informalsiia featured information from foreign papers and private citizens’ testimony, including testimony from prisoners, and in this way it was a precursor of the human rights bulletins that started in the late 1960s.

At Maiakovskii Square at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, Iurii Galanskov's “Human Manifesto” was a popular text of youthful pain and protest. Far more politically pointed groups developed out of this milieu, and there was even talk of assassinating Nikita Khrushchev. See Polikovskaia, Ludmila, My predchuvstvie, predtecha: Ploshchad’ Maiakovskogo, 1958-1965 (Moscow, 1997)Google Scholar.

19. See Siniavsky, , “Dissent as a Personal Experience,” trans. Kecht, Maria-Regina, Dissent, 31 no. 2 (Spring 1984): 154 Google Scholar. The Russian version, “Dissidentstvo kak lichnyi opyt,” appeared in Sintaksis, no. 15 (1985): 131-47.

20. Siniavsky, , “Dissent,” 154 Google Scholar.

21. Nepomnyashchy, Catharine Theimer, “Andrei Siniavsky (AbramTertz) (1925-1997),“ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 302, Russian Prose Writers after World War II, ed. Rydel, Christine (Farmington Hills, Mich., 2004), 296–316 Google Scholar.

22. Pomerantsev, V., “Ob iskrennosti v literature” Novyi mir, 1953, no. 12: 18–45 Google Scholar.

23. The term socialist realism appeared in the Soviet press beginning in 1932 and was promulgated in this formula at the First Writers’ Congress in 1934.

24. Siniavskii, A., “Poeziia i proza Ol'gi Berggol'ts,” Novyi mir, 1960, no. 5: 225-36Google Scholar.

25. The original article on the new young poetry was by Men'shutin, A. and Siniavskii, A., “Za poeticheskuiu aktivnost'. (Zametki o poezii molodykh),” Novyi mir, 1961, no. 1: 224-41Google Scholar. For their response to their critics, see “Davaite govorit’ professional'no,” Novyi mir, 1961, no. 8: 248-52.

26. Siniavskii declared Pasternak to be against stereotypes and clichés in the broad sense of the word, though the phrases of common speech were an antidote to literary cliché. See Siniavskii, , “Poeziia Pasternaka,” in Pasternak, , Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 24, 28Google Scholar.

27. See Siniavskii's, “Odin den’ s Pasternakom,” Sintaksis, no. 6 (1980): 135 Google Scholar.

28. See Siniavskii, A., “Poeticheskii sbornik B. Pasternaka” (review of Boris Pasternak, Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy, ed. N. Kriuchkova [Moscow, 1961]), Novyi mir, 1962, no. 3: 261-63Google Scholar.

29. A typescript of the transcript of the meeting at which Moscow writers voted to request Pasternak's exile circulated in samizdat (a typescript copy was preserved among Siniavskii's papers). Hoover Institution, Siniavskii Collection, Box 58, F. 3, “Stenogramma obshchemoskovskogo sobraniia pisatelei, 31 oktiabria 1958 goda.” It was later published in the New York émigré journal Novyi zhurnal, 1966, no. 83.

At the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, Pasternak's poems from Doctor Zhivagov/ere among the most widely circulated poems in typescript, representing a transition between the private sharing of poems and the more developed network of unofficial circulation that would be called “samizdat” by the mid-1960s.

30. A detailed account of these events can be found in Johnson, Priscilla and Labedz, Leopold, Khrushchev and the Arts: The Politics of Soviet Culture, 1962-1964 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar.

31. See Siniavskii's official invitation from Orlov, June 1962. Siniavskii then receives communications from the editorial director, Ninov, A., and from editor Tsurikova, G. M.. “Perepiska,” 186-87Google Scholar.

32. From Orlov's commentary addressed to Siniavskii, conveyed with a letter from Tsurikova, 11 September 1963. “Perepiska,” 188-91. For an analysis of the odious term prorabatyvat', see Etkind's, Efim linguistic digression in his Zapiski nezagovorshchika: Barselonskaiaproza (St. Petersburg, 2001), 132-39Google Scholar.

33. See, for example, one summation of his theory in which he says of authors: “By entering the game, they tacitly accept the constraints and the possibilities inherent in that game (which are presented not in the form of rules, but rather as possible winning strategies).“ Bourdieu, , The Field, 184 Google Scholar.

34. This handwritten note is not signed and has no date in the preserved documents. “Perepiska,” 191.

35. See the comparison of Pasternak's lyrical “I” with those of other poets. Siniavskii, , “Poeziia Pasternaka,” 18–19 Google Scholar.

36. Ibid., 36.

37. For Orlov's criticism of Siniavskii's commentary on the Gospel poems, see point 5 in his letter of 15 February 1964. In September 1963, it sounds like the poems will be included and commented on in the article. But Tsurikova's letter of 23 October 1963 indicates the verses will most likely be excised. Although in Orlov's letter of 15 February 1964 it sounds as though the poems will be included, they are cut from the published edition— only 16 of the 25 poems, coyly titled “Verses from a Novel,” are included. “Perepiska,” 195, 189-90, 193. The grand series of publications from Biblioteka poeta pretended to be definitive, complete editions. Therefore, publication of the poem “Avgust” in Iunost', 1965, no. 8, almost immediately after the edition appeared, was probably irksome.

38. Siniavskii, , “Poeziia Pasternaka,” 40 Google Scholar.

39. Ibid., 41.

40. Ibid., 48.

41. See Tsurikova's letter of 12 October 1963, and Orlov's letter of 15 February 1964. “Perepiska,” 191-92, 194-96.

42. See the changes in Siniavskii, , “Poeziia Pasternaka,” 10 Google Scholar. Information about Siniavskii's conversations with Elena and Evgenii Pasternak comes from my personal correspondence with them (e-mail correspondence, 20 November 2003).

43. See Tsurikova's, letter of 23 October 1963, and the same letter by Orlov, 15 February 1964. “Perepiska,” 192-93, 194-96Google Scholar.

44. The foreword (predislovie) is signed by the editorial board (redaktsionnaia kollegtia) of Biblioteka poeta. Pasternak, , Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy, 5–6 Google Scholar.

45. Marietta Chudakova explored the author's identification with Christ in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. She considered these figures representative of a certain limit within that (modernist) literary epoch, beyond which literature could no longer proceed. Chudakova identified the popular and collective heroes of Solzhenitsyn's works as the best representatives of the next cycle. See Chudakova, “Pasternak i Bulgakov: Rubezh dvukh literaturnykh tsiklov,” Literaturnoe obozrenie, 1991, no. 5: 11—17. In answer to her argument, I would say that taking Siniavskii's creations, including both heroes of stories and Terts himself as representatives of a new cycle, challenges us to rethink the role of the author and the boundaries of the artistic work.

46. “Poslednee slovo Andreia Siniavskogo,” in Belaia kniga o dele Siniavskogo i Danielia (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), 305-6.

47. See Liudmila Alekseeva's history of dissidence. Alekseeva, , htoriia inakomysliia v SSSR: Noveishii period (Vilnius-Moscow, 1992), 204-5Google Scholar.

48. “Iz vospominanii Vladimira Bukovskogo” and “Rasskazyvaet Dmitrii Zubarev,“ both in Daniel, and Roginskii, , eds., Piatoe dekabria, 22–23 and 29Google Scholar.

49. “Iz vospominanii Evgeniia Kusheva,” in Daniel’ and Roginskii, , eds., Piatoe dekabria, 24–25 Google Scholar.

50. Art critic Igor’ Golomshtok “to this day recalls how everyone was asking whether Daniel’ and Siniavskii were good or bad people. Only Vol'pin was interested in the judicial details of the case.” “Rasskazyvaet Iuliia Vishnevskaia,” in Daniel’ and Roginskii, , eds., Piatoe dekabria, 21 Google Scholar.

51. “Rasskazyvaet Aleksandr Vol'pin,” in Daniel’ and Roginskii, , eds., Piatoe dekabria, 43 Google Scholar.

52. I am indebted to Benjamin Nathans for sharing his work on the development of Esenin-Vol'pin's thought.

53. See Iurii Lotman's analysis of the particularly strong tendency in Russian culture to transfer principles of hagiography to secular writers in the post-Petrine period. Lotman, Iu. M., “Russkaia literatura poslepetrovskoi epokhi i khristianskaia traditsiia,” in Iu. M. Lotma.n i tartusko-moskovskaia semioticheskaia shkola (Moscow, 1994), 364-79Google Scholar.

54. “Rasskazyvaet Liudmila Alekseeva,” in Daniel’ and Roginskii, , eds., Piatoedekabria, 34–35 Google Scholar.

55. On the mutual distrust between the older generation of liberals and the younger rebels who came together for the demonstration Vol'pin organized, see the editors' comments before and after personal memoirs in Daniel’ and Roginskii, eds., Piatoe dekabria.

56. See the text of the “Grazhdanskoe obrashchenie” and discussion of variants in Daniel’ and Roginskii, , eds., Piatoe dekabria, 18 Google Scholar.

57. The 1880 Pushkin Celebration was seen as a “public validation of Russian intellectual life.” Marcus Levitt wrote, “For many at the time, the Pushkin Celebration promised that the Russian intelligentsia had finally come into its own. Newspapers referred to the Pushkin Celebration as ‘Holiday of the Intelligentsia’ and ‘Celebration of Russian Public Opinion,’ an event that signaled the intelligentsia's legitimacy and its readiness to serve as a ‘middle’ class, intermediary between state and a nation.” Levitt, , Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880 (Ithaca, 1989), 17 Google Scholar.

58. Vol'pin nevertheless conceded Stroeva's point, fixed the meeting next to the poet in the “Appeal,” and afterward referred to her involvement by calling this a co-authored text. The text was not signed. See Daniel’, and Roginskii, , eds., Piatoe dekabria, 43 Google Scholar.

59. Krivulin, Viktor, “Zolotoi vek samizdata,” in Strelianyi, A., et al., Samizdat veka (Moscow, 1999), 351 Google Scholar.

60. Alekseeva said, for example, that dissidents were relatively unified in the 1960s in their call for “true Marxism” or “true Leninism,” though by the 1970s one saw a multiplicity of competing diagnoses of what had gone wrong and how to fix it. Alekseeva, , Istoriia inakomysliia, 240 Google Scholar.

61. See Krivulin's, Viktor history of samizdat and unofficial culture, “Zolotoi vek samizdata,” 351, 354Google Scholar.

62. Bourdieu spoke, for example, of the “collective bad faith” of the field, as well as a homology between the field and the “dominant class in society,” whose interests autonomous culture coverdy serves. Bourdieu, , The Field, 50, 89Google Scholar.

63. Bourdieu said, “The break necessary to establish a rigorous science of cultural works is something more and something odier than a simple methodological reversal. It implies a true conversion of the ordinary way of thinking and living the intellectual enterprise. It is a matter of breaking the narcissistic relationship inscribed in the representation of intellectual work as a ‘creation’ and which excludes as the expression par excellence of ‘reductionist sociology’ the effort to subject the artist and the work of art to a way of thinking uiat is doubly objectionable since it is both genetic and generic.” Bourdieu, , The Field, 192 Google Scholar.