The Urban Theme in Recent Soviet Russian Prose: Notes Toward a Typology

Author(s): George Gibian

Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), pp. 40-50
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GEORGE

GIBIAN

The Urban Theme in Recent Soviet Russian Prose:

Notes Toward a Typology
Late in Doctor Zhivago,afterits lyricalnaturedescriptionsand idyllicback-tothe-earthretreatsin ruralVarykino,we run intothe followingstartlingpassage:
These noteswerefoundlateramonghis [Zhivago's] papers: "When I came
back to Moscow in 1922 I foundit desertedand half destroyed.So it has
come out of the ordealsof the firstyearsafterthe revolution:so it remains
to this day. Its populationhas decreased,no new houses are being built,
and the old ones are leftin disrepair.
But even in this conditionit is still a big modern [sovrem*zennyi]
city,
and cities are the only source of inspirationfor a new, trulymodernart.
The seeminglyincongruousand arbitraryjumble of thingsand ideas
in theworkofthe Symbolists(Blok, Verhaeren,Whitman) is not a stylistic
caprice.This is a new order of impressionstaken directlyfromlife. Just
as theyhurrytheirsuccessionof images throughthe lines of theirpoems,
so thestreetin a busyt:ownhurriespast us, withits crowdsand its carriages
at the end ofthe last century,
or its streetcarsand subwaysat the beginning
of ours. Pastoral simplicitydoes not exist in these conditions.Its pseudoartlessnessis a literaryfraud,an unnaturalmannerism,a bookish phenomenon,not inspiredby the countrysidebut taken fromthe shelves of
academicarchives.The livinglanguageof our time,born spontaneously
and
naturallyin accord with its spirit,is the language of urbanism.. . . The
city,incessantlymovingand roaringoutsideour doors and windows,is an
immenseintroduction
to thelifeofeach ofus."'
What are we to make of Pasternak's contentionin view of the current
Russian infatuation
withderevenskaiaproza (rural prose) ? Was he just plain
and formof the literaturein his
wrongabout what the main theme,inspiration,
own time was (he died in 1960), or did intellectualand imaginativedevelopmentsin Soviet Russia veer offin a sharplydifferent
directionafterhis death?
In the last fifteenyears,an ocean of Russian literaryvitalityhas indeed
poured itselfnot only into novels and stories,but also into poems, films,and
dramas about Russian villages,the countryside,
and folksyrural charactersof
the kind that we associate, to begin alphabetically,with Abramov,Astaf'ev,
name of Rasputinto the morerecently
Belov, and on throughthe time-hallowed
1. Translation slightlyaltered by George Gibian fromthat by Max Hayward and Manya
Harari, Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (New York: Signet Books, 1958), pp. 406-7
(Russian original, Universityof Michigan edition, 1958 [?], p. 500). This was not a freak,
isolated statementby Pasternak. In his autobiography he made a similar remark, not in
Zhivago's name, but in his own: "How that style [Blok's] seemed to agree with the spirit
of the age . . . the language of conspirators of which the chief character was the city and
the chief event the street" (Boris Pasternak, I Rci11emember
[New York. 1959], p. 50). The
Zhivago poem "The Earth," the late poems "Na rannikh poezdakh" (1941) and "V
bol'nitse" (1957), and others also speak of the urban theme in similar language.

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UrbanThemein RecentSovietRussianProse

41

worshippedShukshin.This nationalpassion amountsto somethingwhichmust

be explainedas much by social psychologistsor anthropologists
as by literary
historiansand critics,for it is attributableto an extraordinaryreceptivity
to
patrioticappeals and to a thirstfor a returnto nationalroots,childhood,and
the past, not only among intellectualsin Soviet Russia's large cities (for they
are the main consumersof this culturalproduct), but also among emigresin
Paris and New York. Yet it is my thesisthat Pasternakwas not mistakenin
his statementsabout the cityas the themefor Russian writingin his and our
age. Derevenskaiaproza is one symptomof a resurgenceof a special kind of
Russian nationalismand one embodiment
of an old pre-SovietRussian national
literarytradition,but it is not the only such present-dayreincarnation.The
cityalso continuesto be an importantthemeand inspiration,2
and in the long
run may be foundto have been more conduciveto complexartisticstatements
and, paradoxical thoughthis may sound, to have been as much of a national
(narodnyi) Russian art formas the derevenshchiki.
Soviet literaturetoday can
be understoodbest throughan awarenessof the dialecticalrelationshipbetween
ruraland urbanthematics.
The urban elementis not just a setting,but plays an importantrole connected with,and influentialin relationto, other features(theme, characters,
plots). When we attemptto group urban prose of the last decades according
to the dominantviews and uses made of the city,we findthat it is possibleto
distinguishfivemain categories,each of which,because of the need to be selective,will be illustratedby no morethan threerepresentative
authors,and most
of themby onlyone.
The volumeof Soviet literatureis massive; one's time (and dedicationand
eyesight)is limited.With the best will in the world,one can read only a small
fractionof whatis beingpublished.Hence one mustbe modestin makingclaims
about the groupingsof chiefthemeswhich one believesone has distinguished
in Soviet prose as a whole. The fiveclasses below are not being offered,dogas indisputable,
matically,
cleanlyseparatecategories,butas tentativesuggestions,
to serveas bases fora discussionof thematicemphasesin Russian urban prose
today.
The City as Octopus
Our exemplaryworkwill be Natal'ia Baranskaia'sA Week Like Any Other
(Nedelia kak nedelia) (Novyi m1/ir,1969, no. 11).
The heroineof thisstory,Olga Nikolaevna,is a "junior researchassistant,"
henceprofessionally
an enviablysituatedmemberof the intelligentsia,
one who
has made it. The cityof Moscow is thelocale of her scientific
employment-some
kind of vitreousplastic researchinstitute-and the place where the quality of
The dominanturbanspiritis thatof hurryand of a variety
herlifeis determined.
of tensionsenvelopingher withtentacularpressures.
She is entrappedand pursuedby the spectersof normfulfillments,
requirements,deadlines.This is the world whichSoviet journalistsroutinelydescribe
2. Iurii Nagibin's sketch, "So Much of Moscow in That Sound" ["Moskva tak mnogo
v etom zvuke"], Novyi mir, 1976, no. 11, deals with the city of Moscow but displays the
same emotions of nostalgia for what is old, unspoiled, and natively Russian as Soloukhin
and other authors of village prose show in writing about the countryside.

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42

Slavic Review

as that of NTR-nautchnto-teklinich esla ia revoliutsiia

(scientific-technological

revolution)or, as we slhouldperlhapsput it, the modernteclhnological

society.
Her life is ruled,withinthis large urban world,by one small tickingobject,
the alarmclock. Slheineverhas enoughtimeor sleep.
The pressuresand demands surroundingher includelherhusband,whoaltlhouglh
theirmarriageis a model one, and they are botlhfondof and even in
love witlheaclhotlher-is unreliableand recalcitrantwhen asked to do wlvatis
consideredwoman's work-mindingthe clhildren
and cookingfor tlhem.
At Olga's institute,a demographeris passing around questionnaireswith
such itemsas why staffmembersdid or did not lhavechildren,asking tlhemto
classifytheirmotivesunderstiltedrubrics,and tusinggeneralizations,
groupings,
and stereotypeswhiclhdo violenceto the spontaneity,enmotionality,
and complexityof real life. The h-eroine'sactual existenceconsists of chasing buses,
trippingwlhilegettingintotlhem,
beinglate forwork,missingseventy-eight
days
of worka year because of clhildren's
sicknesses(almost a quarterof a year,lher
husbandremarks),forgetting
to turnon the alarm clock or forgetting
that slhe
lhada seminarto go to andltlherefore
annoviig lherhusbandtlhrouglh
her unexpectecllatenessin gettinglhome.Unpleasantsurprisestypicalof her way of
life in this quite typicalweek include an above-normalwork request to the
laboratory;but the crux of it all is lack of timeand the concomitants-theneed
always to hurryand the lack of sleep. Commuting(by bus, subway,and trolley
bus) the questionnaireelicits,takes about threelhoursa day. It is clear that
tlhequestionnaire
also servestheusefulliteraryfunctionl
of bringingout statistical
factsof thisurbanlife.OInly48 to 53 hoursa week,an additionslhows,remain
forlhome.
The artificial,
abstractworldof the questionnaireis disruptedby manifestations of harassed lhumanity-herchild is violentlyill; Olga has hysterics.She
does an impromptuskit parodyingan answer to the questionnaire.Shle mocks
the quiestionabout motivationforlhavingchildren:"Comrades! Let a motherof
manyyears' standinghave the floor! I assure you that I bore my childrenexI clhallenge
all of vou to competition
and hope
clusivelyforcivic considerations.
you will beat me in quantityas well as in qualityof produtction."
The mannerin whiclhshe actuallydecidedagainstan abortionand forlhaving
lhersecond child-an emotional,illogicalconversationwitlhlherhusbandwhich
she recalls-contrastswitlhthe officialphraseologyof a colleague,Maria Mat-veevna:"A Soviet woman will guide herselfby public, national interestsin
such a matteras bearingchildren."Maria's clichessound vapid alongsidevivid
and group shopping
accounts of childrenhaving diarrhea,familyargunments,
breaks.
duringlunchI
The storyis partlyin the vein of Soviet documentaryprose. The plot is
minimal.The week of the story,dividedby sublheadings,
day by day, Monday
tlhrough
Sunday,presentsthe routineof houirlyand weeklylife-the grindand
pressure.It is as close as one cainget to reportage,and is in this regardrepresentativeof that lhmge
very popular categoryof semifictional,
semijournalistic
short prose in Russia today, so reminiscentof our own "New Journalists"
(for example,Tom Wolfe). (Soloukhin,Granin,Bitov, and manyotlhershave
made excursionsinto this genre.) It is not an attemptto writea new gospel
or to
(which Sinyavskysaid is themain endeavorof mostof Russian literatuLre)
show the road to salvation.It concentrates
on the hereand now-on description

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Urban Theme in Recent Soviet Russian Prose

43

of tlhings
as theyare, reality,the concreteparticularcontrastedwiththe debased,
institutionalized
of the questionnaire.It is neitherpropheticvision,
plhraseology
nor sermon;it is not nationalistic,
but it is national,Russian. It belongsto its
place and its time,and concentrateson presentinga view of how life is in the
octopus-likeembrace of tlhemetropolis,in the traditionof Grigorovichand
in tone.
Nekrasov,with modernmodifications
The urbanpresencein Baranskaia's story,then,is feltas one whichtends
to overwhelmthe clhiefcharacter.It is necessaryto struggleagainst it in order
to be able to draw a freebreath (literally,in the sense of holdingon to some
time in whiclhto do what one wants; and, metaphorically,
of preservingsome
genuineindividualityagainst tlhefalsifying,
delhumanizing
violencebeing done
to life by the formulasof the anketa). The two inimicalforcesare linked by
beingthe two facesof the urbanmilieu.
Olga's dilemmacould well be summedup as self-defense
against the twin
alarm
and
the
all
the
clock, witlh
broad implicationsof the
perils,the anketa
two small materialobjects. The specificsof her struggleare unique to this
particularstory,but the visionlof the cityas an octopusemergesin otherSoviet
works,if not pervasively,as in Baranskaia,thenat least in some parts of them.
Iurii Trifonov'sHoutseon the Enibankment(Dorn na naberezhnoi) (Druzhba
narodov,1976, no. 1) for example,presentssuccessivestages,fromthe 1930s
tillthe "Thaw," of oppressionand falsehoodconcentrated
in the Moscow "house
witllthe thousandwindoows"
wherethe powerfulpredatorsreside,whereasthe
humblecourtyardssheltera more elementallife of the populace. (We should
also rememberthat literatureof WVestern
countriespresentssimilar views of
the modern metropolis.3)

The City of White Nights,Dreamers,and Seekers

A situationpeculiarlyappealing to twentieth-century
man is that of the
youngperson"tryingto findc
himself."The vague and tritephrase "findingoneself,"so frustratingly
familiarto us today,can mean findinga vocation(literally
a professionor a job) or discoveringwhat one values in life,what one wants
to look for,or it may mean findingsome basic truth-a philosophyof life.It is
always a quest fora discoveryconnectedwiththe self.
This searclhis as old as Oedipus and Aeneas, or Pierre Bezukhov and
KonstantinLevin. One contemporary
Soviet Russian model is almost identical
with what is called mjolodaiapro,a, prose of youth.Vasilii Aksenov has been
the clhiefauthorin this category,but he lhasmany fellows.4There are several
variantsin approachto, and orientationof, the quest, and even more in the
textureand dominantliteraryqualities of the stories. Abramov, Belov, and
Shukslhinare also oftenpreoccupiedwith a young man's quest for liis calling
3. See, for example, Marilyn S. Fries, "The Significance of Spatial Constructs in the
Literature of the City," in The City and Seisc of Comimunity,
ed. Sander L. Gilman (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Center for Urban Developmenit, Cornell University, 1976); and Otto Friedrich
Bollnow, Mensch noadRaum (Stuttgart, 1971).
4. On the firstintroductorypage of Kollegi (1961), Aksenov states with defiantbluntness what the dominiantsituation will be in that book. The remark applies to many others:
"This is a tale about younigcolleagues-doctors, seeking their place in life and findingit, a
tale about the young generation,about its thoughts,feelings, love."

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44

Slavic Review

but theylook back to the villageprose of Grigorovich,5

of Turgenev'sHunter's
Sketches,of Bunin and Prishvin.Aksenov, Bitov, and Gladilin,on the other
hand,derivefromDostoevsky'surban storiesof the dreamer (mechtatel') and
of Petersburg'sWhite Nights.But just as therewere foreign,perhapsdistracting,parallelinfluencesin tlhe1840s (George Sand's La Mare atn.diable and La
PetiteFadetteforTurgenev; Balzac forDostoevsky),so is Salingeran analogue
(parallel, not source, since Aksenov wrote his basic storiesbeforehe became
acquainted with the simultaneouslypublished first Russian translationsof
Salinger) in tlhemiddleof the twentieth
century.6
An importantcharacteristic
of the Aksenov-Gladilinschool is the flippancy
and clevernessof the heroes' language. They are suave, slick,cool, intelligent,
educated,ironic.In theirsoplhistication
and disillusionment,
theycontrastsharply
withithe generationof theirfathers.In Gladilin'slittlemasterpiece"First Day
of the New Year,"7 the heartof the storylies in the contrastbetweentlle son
(at a pointof crisis in his life) and the father(dying of cancer in a hospital)
and in the effort
at communication
across a huge gap-speaking lhaltingly
in two
different
languages,fromtwo different
sides of the barricades,albeit the issues
are thesameones.
Aksenov's short storiesand novelettes(Colleagues [1960], Starry Ticket
Morocco [1963]) establishedthis subgenre; it ran its
[1961], Oranges fronit
course ratherquickly.The stories seemed novel and fascinating,and to some
readers,even sensational,but they h-avenot aged or traveledwell. Aksenov's
heroessometimesworkout theirfindingof themselvesin remoteplaces-Siberia,
or islands, towns, and beaches of the Baltic-but they are urban dwellers,
formedby thebig city,imbuedwithits sophisticated,
confusing,
value-destroying
milieu.The cityis wherethe actionis, even if,as in the shortstory"Half Way
to the Moon," the hero is a truckdriver
who only gets a whiffof cosmopolitan
and metropolitan
culture,at a distance,fromtheairportand on board an airliner,
shuttlingbetweeneasternSiberia and Moscow.
In Aksenov's melancholy"Dad, Spell It" ("Papa slozhi" [1962]), the
ex-soccerplayerfindshe is gettingold, his wifemay be deceivinghim,she and
lhebelong to different
educationalcategories,a phase of his life is ending,the
futureis uncertain.He takes his littledaughterfromcafe to cafe,broods about
his life,and roamsthestreetsof Moscow muchas Raskolnikovhladin Petersburg.
The labyrinthof the city surroundshim as he walks throughit, a settingfor
his semiarticulate,
semiemotionalresponses,evokingin him ruminationsabout
the stages of his life.His is a Moscow of footballstadiumcrowds. On the last
page, Aksenovgives a panoramaof the city,seen throughthe sadder,possibly
wiser,hero'seyesand ears:
5. Turgenev called Grigorovich's Village (Derevnia, 1848) the firstattempt "at bringing our literature close to national (narodnaia) life" (quoted in A. Ninov, Sovremnennyi
rasskaz [Leningrad, 1969], p. 25).
Aksenov answered the question "Which
6. In a questionnaire in Voprosy literatutry,
traditions in classical and contemporaryliterature are close to you ?": "The traditions of
Russian classical literature,the traditionsof Tolstoy and Chekhov. Soviet literature of the
twenties and early thirtiesinterestsme enormously.Reading Babel' and Andrei Platonovthat is a good school. Hemingway, Faulkner, B611, Saliriger-that is also a first-classschool,
besides the pleasure which the reading of their books gives one."
7. lunost', 1963, no. 2, pp. 31-57; and in book form,Pervyi den' novogo goda (Moscow,
1965).

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Urban Theme in Recent Soviet Russian Prose

45

Furtheron was thepark,therowsoftrees,and Moscow,Moscow,impossible

to see all of it, burningwithmillionsof sunlitwindows.There in Moscow
is his lhouse,35 square meters,there,in Moscow,thereare telephonebooths
on all streetcorners,in each of themone can findout about danger,in each
of whichthe heart can skip and legs buckle,in each of which finallyone
can calm down. There in Moscow all his 32 years are quietlywalkingout
on the streets,calling out to one another,and not findingone another.
There in Moscow are manyprettygirls,hundredsof thousandsof pretty
girls.There wise institutescarryon research,therepeople are being promoted.There are his calmnessand his worries,his puppy love whichhas
come to an end. Th-ereis his youtlhwhichpassed like a cheerful,incredibly
tall schoolboy,in its traininghalls and stadium,in gangs and beer halls,
in dance halls, in underpasses, in kisses, in music in the park.

. .

. There

whichwill yet come to pass with him. And what's to come

is everything
later?Who knows. [Chto potom?Sup s kotont.]8

The city is his entirelife,an all-encompassingmedium; it evokes in him

The city is both the settingand the stimulusfor
thoughtsand reminiscences.
dreaming,wandering,and wondering.
The urban world of Gladilin's Foreca-stfor Tomorrowis very similarto
Aksenov's-a mediumwhichevokeslyricism:
The city-thousandsof faces,thousandsof faces whichwe see in the subway, in the trolleybus, on the street.Among these thousands,we know
or on thecontrary
ten,at themosta hundred.We smileat themunwittingly,
turnaway, or in vain tryto rememberwhere we met that man. . .. We
are crammedinto subway cars, we must ride a long twentyminutes,we
are in a loathsomemood,and in frontof us again thereare faces of people,
faces whiclhare probablyvery beautiful,but wlhichnow seem caricatures
to us-we don't know whichway to turn,we simplyhave no place to go.
We close our eyes or get out an old newspaper,again read about American
news we already
imperialistsand Israeli aggressorsand Bonn revanchists,
heard in the morningon the radio. There is no newspaperand we again
look with envy at the luckyones who are sittingdown, buried in books,
at theownersofthelatesteveningpaper-youth has passed [Gladilinbreaks
in withouttransition-abruptly-as thoughit followedfromwhat he has
been narrating],when everyminutewe dreamedof an accidentalmeeting,
about how the door will open and she, the beautifulunknownone, will
come in. The timepassed when for everyman we triedto guess his character,profession,familysituation.Alas, every day we spend three hours
subway-thousands
and so manyyearsmakeup an uninterrupted
commuting
of cars, millions of faces....

stop.9

You get out (sighing with relief) at your

The cityhere connotesthe subwayand masses of people. It is a reminder

of change,of the passage of time,feltas a loss of the past.
The heroand narratorof the storyhas two major decisionsto make-about
his professionand a choice betweenhis mistressand his wife. Both turn out
to be connectedwith a thirdproblem-his relationtoward the many or the
8. Translated from Aksenov, Katapul'ta (Moscow, 1964), p. 115.
9. Anatolii Gladilin, Prognioz na zavtra (Frankfurt: Posev, 1972), p. 12.

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46

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few-because the argument for devoting himself to his scientific career (and
to his mistress) is that he owes it to millions of people now and in the future
to fulfillhis utmost potentialities in scientific research. An appeal is made to
him to choose work (plus mistress) and to downgrade the importance of his
wife and dauglhter.("Problems of yotirfamilyare problems of millions of people
in all countries. Every minute on earth thousands of people are born and die.
They are not able to do what you can. The world is huge. Billions of new people
will appear, but you will not be here aniy more. You will have died and not
fulfilledlyour destiny.") He rejects the "abstract man" for wlhom he may be
thought to be predestined. He decides that "even if I really . . . am of some
kind of value to millions of people, so for me these millions begin withl my two
girls [his wife and daulghter], tlheycan't live without me and I can't live without them, and if my two girls are not there, then I don't give a damn for those
millions, without them [the two girls] I have nobody, nobody needs me."'0
He clhooses the smallest concentric circle--those nearest to him: intimate,
immediate personal relations; closeness, rather thanl anonymnous,vast, remote
links to millions and to the ftuture.The city, whiclhto him represented scientific
possibilities, as well as gangs of young boys and girls, is the arena of his basic
decision making, centered on the problem of wlhichhlman links, those with the
many or tlhose with the ones closest to him, lie slhould give preference to. He
lhad been a weatlherstation teclhnicianin the far nortlh,and a fislhermanin the
far east ("Looking for the Fire Bird"), but it is the city where tl-hetwo crucial
decisions come to a blead and are solved by him.
Andrei Bitov's stories often preselnt lheroes who are modern versions of
Dostoevsky's Underground MIan crossed witlhhiis dreamer. Many of them are
children or adolescents. In "'Tle Door' ('Dver"')
the Y-otung
man spends most of
the nighltoutside of an apartment whlerehiisgirl is visiting, consumed by pangs
of jealouisy, iInagining wlho slhe may be witlh,and picturing what terrible things
he will do to her when slle comes out of the apartmnent.(When she does come,
he accepts her explanation with amazing alacrity.) Most of the story consists
of an unhappy stream of consciousness of the upset young man's imaginings.
Another hero daydreams while traveling througlhthe city on a streetcar.
Reverie was Bito'v's dominant mode in his early stories, the hero's mind wandering while, for example, lhe is being reprimanded by hiisboss. In an unpublished
story (w7ritten ill 1963), "Notes from the Corner" ("Zapiski iz-za ugla") he
wrote, "Depiction of tlhefalling asleep of consciousnless,the replacement of consciousness by a reflex, the life of the intellectual without intellect, is, it seems
to me, so characteristic of our time. All tlhishas been pursuing me as a theme
for suiclha long time, as can be seen in 'Penelope.' in 'Garden' ('Sad'), and in
'Life in Windy Weather.'" l The protagonist of "The Loafer" ("Bezdel'nik")
daydreams on a bus, imagines he sees a woman murdered, goes to a movie,
wanders about, just as when he was in schiool and played hooky. (Bitov's city
dwellers, wheninot children, often act as if they were still children. His stories
in the early sixties are usually seen from the point of v7iew of a child, whereas
Semin's are those of a growlnupalnd Trifonov's of an old person looking backward.) We are not surprised that the 'loafer's" boss needs to remind him,
10. Ibid., p. 186.
11. Manuscriptsin the possession of George Gibian.

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Urban Theme in Recent Soviet Russian Prose

47

"You are a grown-upman,Vitia." His consciousnesswandersoffthe mainthing,

on to irrelevantside issues-for example,a cactus on a windowsill. The center
dissolvesinto an urban panorama (a red streetcarwith a white roof,the blue
cupola,black-white
trees,thechurch,thesquare,in "Bezdel'nik"). The peripheral
issues,whiclh
includethecityscape,are themainthingforthecharacter.
The dominantmediumof refracting
and absorbingthe smallincidents(often
eveninmagined
nonincidents,
as in the staticwait in thedoorwayin "The Door")
in Bitov is sensibility:moody, receptive,hypersensitive.
The episodes carry
the message of insignificance.
Things do not come off.A briefencounterwith
a girl leads to nothing-connectionsare brokenoff,falselystated,misleading.
In "Wife Not At Home," his hero makes a date witha girl whichhe does not
reallywantto keep; he thencomestoo late and she is gone. He goes to a movie
whichhe does notwantto see; he getstherelate also. The charactersare aimless
people,bummingaroundtown,drinking,feeling,dreamiing.
Bitov'sstoriesin theearly1960s,itmustbe said,wereonlya stage.They were
succeededby new thlemes,
new narratives-so different
one mightnot guess that
the same authorhad writtenthem. Subjective lyricaldreaminesswas replaced
by objectivity,adolescentsensitivityby reportage,reverieby objective documentaryprose.12It was in his earlierworksthat Bitov was a twentieth-century
followerof Dostoevsky'sthemeof city-inspired
dreamersand seensitive
young
people.
In thislarge categoryof prose works,the cityfunctionsas the stimulusto,
and settingof, self-analysesand reveries.Youthful,confusedheroes wander in
an urban settingreminiscent
of the Petersburgof young Dostoevsky(although
in Soviet Russia today,Moscow most of the time replacesthleformercapital).
The city is a catalystin the characters'workingthroughtheir lyrical introspections.
The City as a Big Village
An entirelydifferent
view of citylifeis takenby Vitalii Semin. His charactersoftenlive in smallertowns (he himselfis fromRostov), or theylive at the
edge of a town.Their ways are old-faslhioned
and rural.They are villagerswho
have movedintoindustriallife,but theirattitudes,emotions,traditionsare those
of Russian peasants. Their language is quaint, colorful,full of proverbs.The
centerof theirlives is the family-and its physicalenvelope,the house. One
mightsay thatthe cityfor Semin's charactersis a metamorphosed
village,and
thatit is all telescoped,shrunkinto a house. The typicalactivitiesof his charactersare buildinga house foroneselfor helpingsomeoneelse in the cooperative
12. Bitov wrote a meditativetravelogue,Journtey
to Arrmenia(Puteshestvie v Armeniiu),
anid The Wlheel (Koleso), a "New Journalism," Tom Wolfe-like account of the world's
capital of motorcycle racing on frozeenlakes, Ufa. Perhaps most importantof all, he also
wrote a long, complex, sophisticatednovel about three generations of people, with a hero
who is also a literary scholar, Pushkiinskiidoms. This book is hithertounpublished; only a
few fragmentshave been printed. Those who have read the manuscript report that it is a
very literary, self-conscious work, reminiscentof Nabokov's Dart, compounded of many
genres and couched in a variety of narrative techniques. Until we can read it and consider
it carefully,we cainnotmake any judgment about its qualities-or its urban themes. In this
complex work, it seems that not space, but time is the subject.

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48

Slavic Review

of buildinga house; worryingabout the troublesin someone'simmeenterprise

diate surroundings(a relativeor quasi-relative),but withoutbotheringabout
moralityor broadersocial contexts,since one helps even a thiefand murderer
if he is of one's own milieu; drinking;eating; arguing; and tellingstories.
The womenare theheroines:theyhold the house together-and thatis the
centerof all life.Semin'sSeven in One House (Sermerov odnomdome) (Novyi
mtir,1965, no. 5) ought to be regardedas the complementto, or that which
completesour understanding
of, Solzhenitsyn's"Matryona'sFarm" ("Matrenin
dvor")-which I considerthe masterpieceof the entireschool of derevenskaia
proza, although,of course, we cannotexpect anyone in Soviet printto admit
this centralfact.Seven in One House, like "Matryona's Farm," is also hagiography-theheroineand saint,Mulia, however,is urban,not rural,and active,
self-assertive,
ratherthan religiouslycontemplative
and passive as is Matryona.
Semin's characters,simple people, with their curse words and proverbs,
trulyfolksy,have one chiefquality-vitality.They are traditional,as close to the
soil as anybodyin Russian literature,but they have moved these qualities of
outlookand speechaway fromthe soil,and theyhave broughtthemalongintothe
houses theyare buildingforthemselves,near where the factoriesare in which
theyearn theirlivings.
There is seldom muchplot in Semin. His works are an apotheosisof byt
(the folkwaysand materialdetailsof everydaylife), as well as of the strength
of the Russian nation-primarilyof female vitality.Thus Mulia "would not
share power with any man . . . in our house." The amoralityand uncivicmindednesswhichSoviet criticshave deploredin Semin are reallya glorification
of smalltownresilience."She lived in thisworld.Neitherbetternor worse than
others,"sums it up. Hard work and enduranceare other traditionalRussian
qualities whichthese urban dwellersdisplay.These people seem to come not
just froma different
countrybut froma different
planetthan Bitov's dreamers
and Gladilin's educatedyoungsters.They admire practicalhandyman-type
expertise,*and matter-of-factly
practice age-old customs (such as pouring out
vodka so thattheirhouse will not smellbadly for a thousandyears).
Semin is not interestedin intellection.
He studiesthe detailsof male-female
relations,and his plots are rich in situationsthatparallel the Russian proverbs
whichorienthis characters'attitudes(for example,that it is when food is on
the table, and especiallywine, that reconciliationstake place withinfamilies)
and whichpermeatetheirlanguage.The womenare strongnot only in keeping
power,but also in theirlove and loyalty.("Asia Aleksandrovna,"anotherstory
by Semin, is told fromthe point of view of a man who only when his father
is dyingcomes to know and admire his stepmother,
who had "always fought
for father,and against me, against the neighbors,against doctors,against my
mother,whom my fatherdivorcedfiveyears ago, and now she fightsagainst
doctorswho came late and did thingswrong."13 It is her strength,
theemergency
constancyin love, and loyal combativenesswhicharouse his admiration.)
Seminwritesof peoplefromthe soil,who fashiontheircities,houses,habits,
and speech into images of theirancientRussian rural traditions.The Russian
towns of this Leskovian writerare dominatedby the folkwaysof women of
incredibleresilience.
1965, no. 11, p. 78.
13. V. Semin, "Asia Aleksandrovna," Novyi mnir,

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Urban Theme in Recent Soviet Russian Prose

49

The City as Site of Factories and Research Institutes

To work out the conceptionof citylife as primarilythe site of industrial
productionwould mean surveyingthe entirehuge fieldof productionliterature
(proizvodstvennyi
ocherk,povest',rasskaz, roman). Sufficeit to say that this
is probablynumerically
thelargestcategoryof Soviet writingeven in the sixties,
althoughproportionately
it has somewhatdiminishedfromits peak in the last
years of Stalin's life.Whetherstraightsocialisticrealism (Kochetov, Sofronov)
or straight"Thaw"-period inversionof it (Ehrenburg's Thaw, Dudintsev's
Not by Bread Alone), such works conceivedof the struggleswithinindustrial
productionas tantamountto basic moral problems: the collectiveversus the
individual,withone or theothercast as hero; publicand professionallifeversus
private,emotionallife (again withone or the othertakingprecedence). I omit
analysisof this categorybecause it has been done before.14To rehearseit once
morewouldbe repetitious.
City as Locale of Perennial Ethical Dilemmas
In discussingRussian urbanstoriesof the 1960s, it is impossibleto pass by
the,long storiesof Iurii Trifonov,who has made such a startlingrise in seriousness and general quality since his early novel Students (1944). He himself
refersto thesetales as "citystories" (gorodskiepovesti)15:Exchange (Obmen)
(1969), SummertimeNoon (Byl letniipolden'), PreliminaryResults (Predvaritel'nyeitogi), and Long Farewell (Dolgoe proshchanie) (Novyi mir, 1971,
no. 8). They have in commonan immenseinventiveness-twoor threepages of
Trifonovsometimessummarizeso many lives, give such compressedaccounts
of so manyevents,thattheywould supplymaterialfor severalnovels by other
authors.Trifonovis concernedwith intercatenations
of familyfates; with a
middle-classor upper-classintellectualmilieu; and with the uglinessof a persistentmeshchanstvo(pettybourgeoismeanness). He analyzes closelythe actions and reactionsof people who gradually,beforeour eyes, and sometimes
beforetheir own eyes, are revealed as plottingto have the mother,who is
terminallyill with cancer,move in withthe family,so that it becomesentitled
to a largerapartment,one theywill be able to keep even after,as is expected,
she will have died. In his latest and most powerfulwork, The House on the
Embankhment
(Dom na naberezhnoi)(Druzhba narodov,1976,no. 1), he studies
the mechanicsof moral cowardiceamong literaryscholarsin StalinistMoscow,
especiallythedetailsof theprocessesby whichmorallyneutralmenwere induced
stepby stepto behavedespicably.
Trifonovdoes not,as so manypublishedSoviet authorsdo, avoid the real
and burningissues of our day, nor does he simplify.On the contrary,he conthathe has an intimateknowledgeof the small supervincesus breathtakingly
ficialdetails,the ways of doing and living of Soviet people today, and of the
14. George Gibian, Interval of Freedon: Soviet Literature During the Thaw, 19541957 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1960), especially chapter 2, "The Scientist as
Hero, Saint, and Martyr," and chapter 4, "Versions of a Soviet Inferno." Vera Dunham,
In Stalin's Tine: Middleclass valuGesill Soviet fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1976), illustratesin great detail this and many other aspects of the sociological documentationdiscoverablein Soviet literature.
15. Interview in Literaturnaia gaoeta, in 1974, with Iurii Trifonov, "Sovremennost'splav istoriii budushchego."

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50

Slavic Review

centralmoral issues-sins of action and omission-which daily confrontSoviet

peoplein themiddleand upperreachesof the urbansocial pyramid.The various
formsof bourgeoismeannessgraduallyemerge,and while it may be excessively
complimentary
to call hiimtoday's Soviet Russian Henry James,he does share
with the Americanmastera subtle,complex,analytic,socially-oriented
moral
consciousness.
Like Gladilin,Aksenov,Bitov; Granin,and manyothers,Trifonovhas also
writtenhistoricalworks,and his tales of theurban Soviet presentare permeated
witha sense of the past (as was Henry James). His Russian nationalidentity
rests in thlislivingRussian legacy whichone feels in his works. To him, city
life is where the moral face of Russia today can be read.
There are writers(Iurii Nagibin,Iurii Kazakov, I. Grekova,Daniil Granin,
particularly
in "Rain in a StrangeTown" ["Dozhd' v chuzhomgorode"]), who
are interestedin showinghow emotionallife,as we know it fromthe Russian
classics, far fromhaving vanished fromthe face of the earth, has survived,
in modifiedform,yet as intenseas ever. Trifonovpursuesthe avatars
nattirally
of nineteenth-century
Russian literarystudiesof the dilemmasof morality.He
is one of those Soviet authorswho turn to the city scene in order to reveal
acute moraldramasin the shape of humanresponsesto a very Soviet, modern,
metropolitan
setting.These ancientyetcontemporary
problemsare not uniquely
Russian,but theyare peculiarlyRussian.
We often have been warned against identifyingRussian nationality
(narodnost') with birch trees and folk songs. Pushkin wanted narodnost'to
mean somethingdeeperthanmerelytakinga themefromthe nationalmilieuand
history-tohimit was a way of thinking
and feeling,it derivedfromthe customs
and superstitions
producedby climate,government,
faith: "There is a way of
thinkingand feeling,thereis a mass of customs,superstitions,
and habits,which
belongexclusivelyto a particularnation.""6
When Turgenevpraised Dal', in a reviewof his Povesti, ska2kii rasskazy
Ka2aka Luganskogo (1847), as more than anyone else deservingthe title of
nationalwriter,he praised not only his sketchesof rural Russians, but specificallyalso of urbanoccupations:"a fat-bellied
merchant,""a janitor" (dvornik),
"a civil servantof middlerank."17Moreover,not rural elements,but a sympatheticattitudeand theabilityto observecloselywerethemainthingto Turgenev.
We mightadd that narodnost',in Russian music as well as in literature,has
consistednot onlyof mattersof content,but of formaland structuralqualities:
of followingthe Russian conventionsof constructing
a novel or a shortstoryand here the examples of Pushkin,Turgenev, Chekhov,and Dostoevskyare
clear. Certain ways of conceivingand analyzinga character'smind, avoiding
contrivedplots and set genres,simplicityof narration,and directnessare also
some of the Russian nationaltraditionsin literature.
ofthepast fifteen
The derevenshchiki
yearsrepresentan important
continuationof somegreatRussian traditions,
especiallytheone runningfromTurgen-ev's
Hunter's Sketches through Bunin to Prishvin. The writers of city tales, on the

line and share

otherhand, continuethe complex Dostoevsky-Tolstoy-Chekhov
with the derevenshchikitheir Leskovian heritage.

16. Pvshkin-Kritik,ed. N. V. Bogoslavskii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1939), pp. 92-93.

17. Quoted in A. Ninov, Sovremennyirasska.z, p. 22.

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