From Vladislav Zubok’s A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin To Gorbachev:
American radio broadcasts and music exercised huge “soft” power upon many young Soviets. American jazz and swing were repeatedly banned in the Soviet Union before World War II and again when the Cold War started. Many young people developed the habit of listening to Voice of America’s radio programs, almost exclusively because of the VOA’s music programs. The number of shortwave radios in Soviet homes grew from half a million in 1949 to twenty million in 1958. At the end of his life, Stalin ordered the production of shortwave radios to be stopped by 1954. Instead, Soviet industry began to produce four million such radios annually, primarily for commercial reasons. Particularly popular was the VOA’s Time for Jazz. Its disc jockey, Willis Conover, owner of a fabulous deep baritone, became a secret hero of many Moscow and Leningrad youngsters. They sang, without understanding many of the words, the songs of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller and listened to Ella fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and the improvisations of Charlie Parker. Later came Elvis Presley. According to all accounds, the VOA’s audience numbered millions. Records of American music stars were not available in stores, and gettinga foreign-made vinyl disk was considered a miracle. By the late 1950s, tape recorders began to change this and broaden the exposure of Soviet youth to Western music.
Fans of Adorno’s work may or may not be surprised to see that one of the oppositions set up here is between totalitarian/authoritarian power and jazz/popular music (not that, I suspect, anyone even really believes Adorno’s lines about the relationship between popular music and totalitarianism, but maybe!) (or maybe they wouldn’t! I’m not even sure anymore). Even members of Adorno’s cast of characters reappear here, as heroes (of course, that would be the case in a book that celebrates the demise of, to date, one of the only serious contenders to capitalism), working to overthrow the oppressor. Which is, maybe, one of the elements of Adorno’s work that bothers me – the way it aligns with the systems it claims to oppose. Ignoring for a minute whether or not jazz fans were really (effectively) working against a system of absolute oppression, it is odd, isn’t it (I mean, isn’t it?), the ways that Stalin(ism) seemed to work toward an Adornoian utopia, a society free of the evils Adorno got so worked up about.
Young Stalin, I’m embarassed to say, was a total DILF (Dictator I’d Like to Fuck). That may be the most uncomfortable sentence I’ve ever typed.
Stalin = hot!
I’m reading Redefining Stalinism, which so far isn’t doing much redefining. Or, rather, it is using ‘Stalinism’ in its classically pejorative sense, where ‘Stalinism’ means something like ’scary totalitarianism’ and ’scary totalitarianism’ more or less means ‘Bad’. Which, if you’re going to play that game – the one where you look at a series of historical events and call them names – is fine, I guess (though, really, is that game even that interesting to play?). But as far as a historical analysis of events, as far as deepening our understanding of historical events (which, to be fair, I’m not even sure is the game that we do play/should be playing with respect to history), doesn’t go far, since in this case ‘Stalinism’ just reduces to ‘Bad’, and questions like “What was Stalinism?” (which seems to be the focus of the book) just reduce, somehow, to “How did such a Bad Thing happen?”, and descriptives become causal explanations, themselves working as a kind of historical apologia, either for History, or for the Everyday Soviet Man (rarely, if ever, for Stalin himself). But, I guess, what is History that we need to defend Its actions (or, is such a theodicy even necessary)? And who are we to try to justify the lives of Soviets (and, implicitly, suggest that their lives need such a defense [and, by way of a lack of such an explanation in the here and now, that our lives don't])?
I’ve been reading (among other things) David Kunzle’s article “Gustave Dore’s History of Holy Russia: Anti-Russian Propaganda from the Crimean War to the Cold War”. In addition to some of the most bizarre academic narrative outside Derrida that I’ve encountered yet, the article had the following great bit:
“1812″ had already figured in Doré’s history as a refrain, a premonition; and afterwards, the date was to be rammed down the Russian throat.
What’s especially nice to me is that it isn’t clear who is doing the ramming – Doré? The imperial, and later Soviet Russian government? France? And what is “the Russian throat”? Does the mythical nineteenth century construct, later revived after the revolution, and again during the Cold War, “The Russian”, have a body now?
According to Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, “If a man inserted his finger, hand, or foot into his wife’s vagina, he was to undergo a penance of three weeks of fasting. A similar penance was mandated if he used a piece of clothing.” Foucault’s corpse so just popped a boner.
According to The Bathhouse at Midnight, women in Russia at one time used water that had been used to wash a corpse in a ritual to reduce the size of their breasts. Gross, maybe, but undoubtedly less invasive than breast reduction surgery.
Filed under: Russia, Soviet Union, fatalism, historiography, history, samizdat
I’m a bit upset by the following bit from F.J.M. Feldbrugge’s Samizdat and Political Dissent in the Soviet Union:
“Perhaps the most serious aspect of the verbal intoxication with such terms as ‘progressive meaning’, ‘objective inevitability’ and the like, is the failure of the Marxists-Leninists to appreciate fully the absolute inhumanity of Stalinist rule and the absolute necessity for its utter and total rejection. … Another element of irrealism encountered among Marxist-Leninist dissidents is their dream of pure and pristine Leninism, which was unfortunately interrupted by the Stalinist nightmare. … Presumably there is a half-conscious awareness that somehow the succession and the success of Stalin was not purely accidental. … The prevailing mood, however, of the ‘loyal dissidents’ remains that the Revolution was a ‘positive’ phenomenon and that in some way a connection must be found between the ideals of Lenin’s Revolution and the present. … Will a return to Leninism [hoped for by some dissident writers] imply that everything will be done over again including perhaps a return to Stalinism? ” (80)
My upset is kind of connected with the phrase “absolute inhumanity of Stalinist rule”, and it is kind of connected with “the failure of the Marxists-Leninists to appreciate fully”, and a little with the “absolute necessity for its utter and total rejection”. It is also connected with the logic of the argument here: the “succession and the success of Stalin was not purely accidental” and, in fact, “a return to Leninism impl[ies] that everything will be done over again including … a return to Stalinism” – that is, that Stalinism was the historically necessary outcome of the revolution – but, there is also an “absolute necessity for its utter and total rejection”. It is an “element of irrealism” on the part of “Marxist-Leninist” dissidents to imagine any other connection between the revolution and Stalinism than the one Feldbrugge imagines, and imagines to be historically necessary, and yet they are also under the imperative to reject that historically necessary Stalinism. The philosophy 101 argument I want to pull out here is that either things are necessary or they aren’t: If Stalinism is the historically necessary outcome of the revolution, then surely the revolution was the historically necessary outcome of something else, etc. And if this is all the case, then surely the “Marxist-Leninist” dissidents’ reaction to their environments is just as historically necessary, as is Feldbrugge’s attitude toward their reactions. And maybe my own. But assuming that this isn’t the case, seriously Feldbrugge, WTF?
I think, though, the most disturbing thing about this bit (and maybe it doesn’t come across in the heavily excerpted quote above) is the attitude it takes toward Soviet dissidents, as if Feldbrugge, the [admittedly, presumed] outsider is coming in and schooling native Russians who lived through Stalinism on what attitudes they should take toward it. It reminds me of adults who take a condescending attitude toward children and say things like “you need to change your attitude, little mister!” WTF Feldbrugge, WTF?
“1. to break; be broken; be smashed
“2. to break up; split up
“3. (of a plane) to crash
“4. to be badly hurt.”
Although when first reading the story, I got the feeling these old ladies were dead, the dictionary gave me an iffy feeling about that initial response. Clearly, the old ladies weren’t planes crashing, so cross out #3. Kharms does some insane stuff with language, but were the old ladies really breaking or splitting up? Probably not; #2 can go, too. So here’s the dilemma: If the old ladies were smashed, they were probably dead. Otherwise, per Katzner, they were just badly hurt. If they’re badly hurt, a lot of the punch is taken out of the story. But if they’re smashed (the closest English equivalent I can think of to what would happen to an old lady who fell out of a window due to immoderate curiosity), how in the hell do I translate that? We don’t usually say in English “she was smashed” without inviting questions like “by what?” or “she smashed” without “into what?”, so using a verb like ‘to smash’ would require extra information not found in the original – something like “smashed/crashed into the ground”. And how do I convey the sense of “she died” without adding an extra item to the list of events?
I also can’t decide what to do with the blind man at the end. The natural English would be “a blind man”, or “a lone/single/whatever blind man” if you need to say that he’s not part of a group of blind men. Kharms, though, specifically says “одному слепому подарили вязаную шаль” – “one blind man was given a knitted scarf”. What’s he doing there? Starting a new list? Reflecting the series of old women, but this time as blind men? Just starting a new story? Anyway, I went with “a blind man” for now. Here’s my current stab, with a few more tweaks.
“One old woman, due to her immoderate curiosity, tumbled out of a window, and fell, killed in the collision.
“From the window another old woman leaned and began to look down at the wounded old woman but, due to immoderate curiosity, she also tumbled out of the window, and fell, killed in the collision.
“Then from the window tumbled a third old woman, and then a fourth, and then a fifth.
“When the sixth old woman tumbled out, I got tired of watching them, and I set off for Mal’tsevskij market where, they say, a blind man was given a knitted scarf.”
“Одна старуха от черезмерного любопытства вывалилась из окна, упала и разбилась.
“Из окна высунулась другая старуха и стала смотреть вниз на разбившуюся, но, от черезмерного любопытства, тоже вывалилась из окна, упала и разбилась.
“Потом из окна вывалилась третья старуха, потом четвёртая, потом пятая.
“Когда вывалилась шестая старуха, мне надоело смотреть на них, и я пошел на Мальцевский рынок, где, говорят, одному слепому подарили вязаную шаль.”
“One old woman, due to immoderate curiosity, tumbled out of a window, fell and was badly hurt.
“Out of the window another old woman leaned and began to look down at the wounded old woman but, due to immoderate curiosity, also tumbled out of the window, fell and was badly hurt.
“Then out of the window tumbled a third old woman, and then a fourth, and then a fifth.
“When the sixth old woman tumbled, I got tired of watching them, and I set off for Mal’tsevskij market where, they say, a lone blind man was given a knitted scarf.”
“The response to Erofeev’s article [on the state of Soviet literature] was voluminous and vehement. Most of the responses agree that Soviet literature was undergoing a profound crisis [in 1990] and might indeed be dead. But many took exception to his more iconoclastic statements. One wrote, for example, that Erofeev’s complaint that Russian literature in general was excessively moralistic and didactic was the equivalent of criticizing Gothic architecture for being ‘too arched.’”
From Deming Brown, The Last Years of Soviet Russian Literature: Prose Fiction 1975-1991
