Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917–1929 9780822379904

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MEN WITHOUT WOMEN

MEN WITHOUT

WOMEN Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929

Eliot Borenstein

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Durham and London

2000

© 2000

Duke University Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper @l Designed by Rebecca M. Gimenez Typeset in Minion with Gill Sans display by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Catalogingin-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

FOR

Deborah Kandall Borenstein (19 2 9-1997)

«I1aMHTb 0 MaTepH IIHTaeT B Hac COCTpa,z:J,aHHe, KaK OKeaH, 6e3MepHbIH OKeaH IIHTaeT peKH, pacceKaIOIIIHe BCeJIeHHyro» - H3 «KOHapMHH»

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

xiii

Note on Translations and Transliteration Introduction

Brothers and Comrades

1

Chapter One The Ladykillers: Bolshevik Chivalry, Female Sacrifice, and the End of the Marriage Plot 43 Chapter Two

Isaak Babel: Dead Fathers and Sons Chapter Three The Family Men of Yuri Olesha

73

125

Chapter Four The Object of Envy: Androgyny, Love Triangles, and the Uses of Women 162 Chapter Five Puritans and Proletarians: Andrei Platonov's Asexual Revolution, 1919-1923 191 Chapter Six Chevengur: Buried in the Family Plot Conclusion

Fathers and Furies Notes

277

Works Cited Index

341

327

264

225

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is only fitting that a book about comradeship should start byacknowl-

edging all the advice, help, and support the author received in the many years it took to bring the project to fruition. Like so many first books, it began as a doctoral dissertation, and my first debt of gratitude goes to my professors and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin. My adviser, David Bethea, was always ready to discuss even the most unorthodox of approaches and was a strong and enthusiastic supporter from the very beginning. My coursework with Clare Cavanagh and Judith Kornblatt gave me the opportunity to develop many of the ideas that would result in this book; both Clare and Judith were also discerning and critical readers of numerous papers and drafts that eventually found their way into the final version. Rounding out my dissertation and exam committees were Gary Rosenshield and Tomislav Longinovic, whose invaluable insights helped me along the way. I am grateful to all of them for encouraging me to take on a project that I thought too large for a doctoral dissertation. And I am particularly indebted to Arlene Forman at Oberlin College for her help with this topic long before it even vaguely resembled its present form. While in Madison, I was supported financially by grants from the Mellon Foundation and the University of Wisconsin, and intellectually by my fellow graduate students and friends, many of whom read drafts and listened to hours of aimless ranting about masculinity and revolution: Amy Singleton Adams, Angela Brintlinger, Luke Ellenberg, Ann Gleason, Paul Klanderud, Dianne Sattinger, Maya Hoptman, Laurie Iudin-Nelson, Francis Poulin, and Jenifer Presto. Much of the original work was completed in Moscow, where I benefited from fascinating conversations with Galina Yevgenievna Khutorskaya and from the patient support of Natasha Lipkina. I am grateful to my colleagues and friends Catherine Sevcenko at the U.S. Embassy's Cultural Section, Marina Abbot and Inga Pagava at the Moscow Fulbright Office, Bill James at the United States Information Agency, and Laurie Calhoun, Carol Hoyer, and Andy Riess at the Council for International Exchanges of Scholars, for their patience with me as I juggled my job

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN

and dissertation responsibilities. Their support (and their lenience!) was much appreciated. Marina Abbott, Dan Davidson, and Catherine Sevcenko all shuttled the manuscript back and forth across the Atlantic, as did a very kind, but unfortunately nameless, man I met while waiting on line at the American Embassy. The transition from dissertation to book was facilitated by the generosity of New York University and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which gave me the opportunity to study utopianism in greater depth at a summer seminar run by Gary Saul Morson and Michael Williams at Northwestern University. The Tri-City Jewish Center in Rock Island, Illinois, provided me a place to write during two nomadic weeks in the summer of 1996. At the University of Virginia, David Herman and Karen Ryan were good colleagues and friends who contributed useful comments and suggestions to various drafts and presentations. Laura Botta, Mark McCuen, Cale Parrish, and Michelle Viise, graduate students in a seminar called "Sex or Communism in 1920S Fiction," were a captive audience for many of the ideas elaborated in this book. I am also grateful for the encouragement of Charlotte Douglas, Stephen Rudy, and Valentina Zaitseva at the New York University Russian and Slavic Studies Department, as well as for the unfailing good humor of Genya Altman. My graduate students Rachel Borst, Maryl Hallett, and Vanessa Marling all contributed to a fruitful dialogue on gender and sexuality in Russian literature, both in class and in their master's theses. I received a great deal of useful feedback from Caryl Emerson, Sona Hoisington, Harriet Murav, Gary Rosenshield, and Margaret Ziolkowski when I presented some of this material at the 1994 AAASS. The Harriman Institute's works-in-progress kruzhok also provided me a forum for what would become chapter 1, and I am grateful to Fred Corney, Cathy Nepomnyashchy, Ludmilla Trigos, and Mark von Hagen for their comments. Adele Barker, Beth Holmgren, Eric Naiman, and Thomas Seifrid all read versions of this manuscript, providing much-needed encouragement and saving me from numerous embarrassing errors and oversights (those that remain are, of course, my own). Valerie Millholland, myeditor at Duke University Press, has been a strong ally and a delightful x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

correspondent. Miriam Angress diligently shepherded the manuscript through production. lowe a particular debt of gratitude to Helena Goscilo and Mark Lipovetsky for their consistent enthusiasm and staunch friendship, and most of all to Frances Bernstein, in whom I have had the good fortune to find not only a scholar who shares my somewhat disreputable academic interests, but a partner who shares my life as well. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to my family: my brothers, Nathaniel and Seth Borenstein, my father, Stanley Borenstein, and my mother, Deborah Borenstein, who I wish had had the chance to see this book in print.

Xl

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLITERATION

The Library of Congress transliteration system is used in this book whenever unfamiliar Russian words are introduced. For the sake of easier reading, however, when Russian authors are named in the body of the text, I have chosen the most familiar English spelling ("Dostoevsky" rather than "Dostoevskii"); last names containing a Russian "e" are rendered with the letters "yo" rather than "e" ("Fyodorov" rather than "Federov"). The "Works Cited" section and internal citations use the Library of Congress system for ease of bibliographic reference; thus, the name of the author of "Twenty-six Men and A Girl" is given in the text as "Gorky" but listed in the citations as "Gor'kii." Fictional characters' names are rendered in a more "reader-friendly" fashion so that non-Russian speakers can better pronounce the names ("Volodya" rather than "Volodia"). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

... look everything's become masculine - Aleksei Kruchenykh, Victory over the Sun (1913) [Clommunist society is essentially a society of men ... Humanity is courage (man), and not the embodiment of sex (woman). He who desires the truth cannot desire a woman. - Andrei Platonov, "The Future October" (1920)

Introduction

BROTHERS AND COMRADES The ideal of perfect manliness [Myx