How life writes the book: real socialism and socialist realism in Stalin's Russia 9780801484230, 9780801433948, 9781501745232

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments (page ix)
Sources and Abbreviations (page xi)
Note on Transliteration and Translation (page xiii)
Introduction (page 1)
1 Project No. 15 (page 7)
2 Utopics: The "Second Baku" and the "Other" of Place (page 25)
3 The Beginning (page 33)
4 Camp Freedom: The Oath; or, On Transference‐Love (page 41)
5 Personal Files (page 63)
6 Borderline I: Rubezhansk (page 69)
7 The Notebooks of Komsomolʹsk (page 79)
8 Far from Moscow (page 103)
9 Borderline II: To Moscow! (page 123)
10 Between Engineers: More on Transference‐Love (page 133)
11 A Thousand and One Nights: Far From Moscow And Its Readers (page 151)
12 The Screen (page 179)
13 Borderline III: The Death of the Chekist (page 189)
Epilogue: How Life Finishes Writing the Book (page 197)
Appendix: Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on Awards to Construction Workers of Special Projects, 30 October 1942 (page 203)
Notes (page 211)
Index (page 243)

Citation preview

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PROJECT NO. 15 21 department, headed by one Krupennikov. This name appears in Azhaev's

diaries of 1941-42; in Far from Moscow, his name is Grechkin. Both names have to do with grains: krupa is the Russian word for “groats,” grecha for “buckwheat.” The bird’s-eye view depicted in Far from Moscow corresponds to what we can see on a map, except for one detail: it is a mirror image of reality. At the spot where the river and the pipeline diverge, the Adun “sweeps on majestically to the right” and the pipeline “swings northward to the left.” In fact the river Amur turns left and the pipeline goes to the right. In other

words, Azhaev reversed the topography, undoubtedly for both strategic and “dialectical” reasons. If the novel was even to see the light of day, maps had to be blurred to mislead the enemy, and nature had to be reengineered to allow one of the great Stalinist constructions to go /eft. At the same time, this reversal of direction shows us a way through the looking glass: that is, fiction is useful to history in its manifold reflections. Does the fictitious inversion of Project No. 15 represent another set of codes, in addition to the toponyms of Far from Moscow, and if so, what is the relation between the two? In addition to Adun, the “river of hell,” and

Rubezhansk, the “city on the border,” there is Taisin, the “island of secrecy” (from the Russian taina) with its city Konchelan, “at the end (or edge)

of the world,” and “Cape Death” (mys Gibel’nyi). Perhaps the settlement of Ol’gokhta stands for the Golgotha where the prisoners of the real Sofiiskoe worked and died.** Azhaev’s notebooks and literary works show that code is to reality as Beridze is to Chkheidze the Chekist, or as Batmanov is to Barabanov, or even as Azhaev within the literary montage of his life is to Azhaev “himself.” Many clues in Far from Moscow and in the novel’s prehistory (i.e., the diaries and other material that have surfaced since Azhaev’s death) show that life and the novel shared the same realm. Azhaev’s doubts and hopes, expressed in his notebooks, his literary conversations with Barabanov, and his debut as a Svobodnyi-reeducated writer, _ show much more than conflictlessness or the varnishing of reality; they demonstrate a desperate and perhaps unprecedented attempt to create literature and culture from below, almost from ground zero. Azhaev's writings also give us a different angle on prison camp literature and a more differentiated picture of camp life. The author of Far from Moscow is far from reaching the level of Swift, Stendhal, or Radishchev, writers whose works he studied at night in Komsomol’sk-on-the-Amur in 1941 as part of the homework for his Gorky Literary Institute correspondence course. If Ermilov’s formula—“The beautiful is our life’—was not directly reflected in

22 HOW LIFE WRITES THE BOOK Azhaev’s book and other novels of that time, it was at least refracted else-

where, as in the reality that the reader found in them, recognizing in Azhaev’s lines his own dreams and aspirations. The following letters, which were found in Azhaev’s archive, indicate that postwar Soviet books

not only were read but actually saved lives: | You know that people liked Far from Moscow; but what you don't know is that this book was read to shreds in the workers’ settlements of the — Donbass (there was only one book, and everybody wanted to read it at the same time). Whole pages were copied from it, by people from various

professions. . . . , I happened to see this book in the house of a physician. In it was written: “This book is an excellent medicine for many diseases.” This book was discussed by Party activists and at workers’ meetings. It was compared to the History of the Party. It became the most cherished book of the people. You cannot get Far from Moscow in any bookshop, not even in Latvian [dazhe net na latyshskom tazyke).°°

Precious Vasilii Nikolaevich! OS How happy I am that I can look at and listen to the living author of the interesting novel Far from Moscow. This interesting thought came to mind as soon as you came out on the stage. How much I liked it [the novel] you can judge for yourself. In 1949 I was to undergo a complicated major operation. I had no hope of surviving this operation, and nevertheless I gave my consent. But I confessed to the doctors that I did not want to die without having read Far from Moscow, and they postponed the operation till the day I finished the book. I say honestly that this was what happened. I will never forget it. And the doctors told me after the operation that there was never in their practice a case in which they made such a concession to a patient, especially when it was so urgent to treat her and

for such a reason. They understood that it was necessary.*° | One of the most important benefits of a symbolic universe is its “legiti-

mation of death”; that is, the integration of the phenomenon of death within a symbolic universe enables an individual to escape the ultimate terror of anticipating his or her own death, or that of a significant other, and to go on living. On the collective level, a symbolic universe also “orders history.” It “links men with their predecessors and their successors in a meaningful totality. .. . With regard to the past, it establishes a ‘memory’

PROJECT NO. 15 23 that is shared by all the individuals socialized within the collectivity.” *” The “memory” that Far from Moscow established in relation to Project No. 15 is illustrated by another letter to its author, written in 1952 by a participant in the construction of a new logging enterprise in Lazarev, who wished “his” writer to know about a memorial desk he had seen on Mysaia Gora, near Cape Lazarevo, on which was inscribed, “This is the place where Batmanov ordered the explosion.” *® Batmanov, the head of the con-

struction site in Azhaevs novel, had merged with the historical head of the Lower Amur Corrective Labor Camp, Barabanov. The year before, the

journalist E. Riabchikov had written an article for the journal Ogonek about an important construction project on the Volga. The highlight of the article is the reporter’s description of his “encounter with Batmanoy,” the hero of Vasilii Azhaev’s novel Far from Moscow.*? In real life the hero was Vasilii Arsent’evich Barabanov, who headed the construction of the hydro-junction of Tsimliansk. Which is more important for history, the living legend or any number of Batmanovs/Barabanovs that other archives might reveal? For there were at least two others. According to A. Kirichenko, the Batmanov of the novel may have been inspired by Vladimir Ivanovich Batmanov, head of the Production Department of the GULZhSD.” Vladimir Ivanovich had worked before the Revolution as one of Russia’s top railway engineers. Released from labor camp by Stalin’s personal order, he became a deputy to Naftalii Aronovich Frenkel’, head of the Main Administration of the GULZhDS (whom we will meet again later), and persuaded Stalin and Beria to liberate from the Gulag a number of other important railway specialists.4! Another Batmanov, whom Azhaev could have known, was Vasilii Ivanovich Batmanov, deputy editor of the Khabarovsk newspaper Tikhookeanskaia zvezda and chair of the Regional Radio Committee in Khabarovsk in 1936-37. As we shall see, this Batmanov played a role in the Far Eastern literary purges during the Great Terror (of which he himself became a victim), together with Aleksandr Gai, Piotr Komarov, Mikhail Alekseev, and others who played important roles in the literary making of Azhaev. Alekseev, for example, was reelected chairman of the Far Eastern branch of the Soviet

Writers’ Union in 1937 and was at that time the “responsible editor” (otvetstvennyi redaktor) of the Khabarovsk journal Na rubezhe, which published “The Son,” a story by our author, freshly released from Camp Freedom in 1937.*3 The journal stood literally “on the borderline” (na rubezhe) between Azhaev’s old life and his new one. The story is about a couple of reeducated (and repentant) criminals whose son is born with a cleft palate.

24 HOW LIFE WRITES THE BOOK But Soviet medicine corrects the child’s deformity, just as shock work on

the Baikal-Amur Main Line had corrected his parents’ deviance.*4 | Who is who in this labyrinth of fact and fiction where BAMLAG, Nizhne-Amurlag, Project No. 15, and literature intersect? As our journey extends through pages printed, partly printed, and not printed at all, history becomes a story, context becomes text. Let us remember what Iurii Trifonov said in his story “The Long Goodbye”: “Oh, if one could only depict the flow of time, which carries along everything and everyone!” * Trifonov and Azhaev shared the same recognition: Trifonov was awarded the Stalin Prize (third class) for his novella “The Students” in 1951, two years after Azhaev received his Stalin Prize (first class) for Far from Moscow. Undoubtedly their life experiences intersected. But Trifonov came to terms

with both the recognition and the experience through fiction. For him there was “another life,” as attested by his novella of that title, which became one of the indisputable literary achievements of the Soviet 1970s.*° For Azhaev there was no other life. This makes all the difference, at least so far as literature is concerned. To find out why is my purpose here.

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