A NEW MOSAIC FROM OLD SPLINTERS:
Re-Coding of Soviet History in Contemporary Russian Prose

Natalia Ivanova
(Znamya, Moscow)

In the last twelve "troubled" (smutnye) years (1986-1998), not just the empire itself, but also the history of the Soviet empire has undergone a repeated (literary) de- and re-construction.

The process of searching for historical identity and the proposal of literary projects of Russian history continues even today.

The first stage, educational. A period of the dethroning of the leaders. In 1986-1991, formerly banned texts and other "withheld" literature, from the 20s to the 70s inclusive, were published en mass. This process had a twofold historical effect: the works of Platonov, Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn, Grossman, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandel’shtam, Pil’niak, and also of contemporary writers – Rybakov, Dudintsev, Soloukhin, Pristavkin – were read, not simply as fiction, but also as historical testimony, refuting official historiography. This publication of truthful works (as opposed to the official lies) appeared in the context of the publication of memoirs, which, in the absence of the earlier ideological taboos and censorship’s prohibitions, offered their own different versions of the way historical events evolved and rehabilitated a series of historical figures. The consciousness of the reader has been traumatized by this pluralistic search for historical truth and by its corollary, the "civil war" among the authors of belles lettres that brought into existence the "left" and the "right" concepts of Soviet history, as reflected in the literary criticism published in such magazines as Ogonek, Nash sovremennik, Novyi mir, Znamia, Molodaia gvardiia. According to one, the country’s past was mired in darkness, according to the other, it was all light.

The second stage, historiosophical, has been characterized by the intrusion into the literary process of the "other" literature and by consequent marginalization of the didactic function of imaginative literature as a source of knowledge about history. Such authors as M. Kuraev, V. Makanin, A. Korolev, V. P’etsukh, among others, assumed an ironic stance vis-à-vis history in their fantastic-philosophical fiction. In their prose, moral judgment is rendered impossible not so much by their concept of Russia’s development as by the use of an ironic metaphor for Russian history.

The third, ambivalent, stage. Post-modern literature is based on the game of playing text against commentaries, a parodic re-coding of the myths, legends and figures of Soviet history (the writings of Dm. A. Prigov, T. Kibirov, V. Sorokin, V. Sharov, V. Pelevin, D. Lipskerov, E. Popov). This literature reflects the general disappointment in the efficacy and usefulness of politicized historical knowledge (the first stage) and a philosophical exegesis of history (the second stage) as much as it reflects the disappointment with the styleless present, the indeterminacy of the future, and the nostalgic longing for the Grand Style.

At the same time, in popular, contemporary historical narratives, such as in the books by E. Radzinsky and K. Belov, simple historical schemes and elementary psychological motivations are coupled with an unambiguous distinction between the "good" and the "evil" in the history of Russia.

Each of these stages does not exactly displace or abrogate those that precede it but co-exists, if in a somewhat diminished form, with its successor on the literary landscape of today’s Russia.