Clark, Katerina. The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual.

Clark, Katerina. The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000

“The Soviet novel performs a totally different function from the one the novel normally performs in the west, and this difference in function has given rise to a different kind of text.” (xi) – why is it an assumption and not a conclusion? If we compare it to ‘middlebrow’ Western fiction, they “function” – if one wants to speak in terms of “functionality” when discussing literature – is perfectly the same, to submerge a person into the world of ideology and politics. Compare a Soviet novel about the Civil War and British imperial adventure novels.

Then Clark turns on the “anthropologist” regime and argues that it makes (perfect) sense to study socialist realism “from the point of view of the semiotics of culture, to discriminate the meaning of texts and the tradition they form, as opposed to their brute structure, by appealing to differences in different culture systems.” (xiii).

“There are at least six major elements in Soviet society and culture that play a part in the generative process of literature. First, there is literature itself; second, there is Marxism-Leninism; third, there are the Russian radical intelligentsia’s traditional myths and hero images, which the Bolsheviks brought with them when they took power in Russia in 1917; fourth, there are the various non-literary forums through which the official viewpoint is disseminated (the press, the political platform, theoretical writings, official histories, and the like), which I shall refer to in this book by the general term ‘rheroric’; fifth come political events and policies; and, sixth, there are the individual persons who are the principal actors in these political events together with their roles and values.” (8)

“The one invariant feature of all Soviet novels is that they are ritualized, that is, they repeat the master plot, which is itself a codification of major cultural categories.” (9) – this is the major hypothesis and starting point of the book. In two words, all Soviet novels are about the workings of the Marxism-Leninism in history. This ritualization is used to generate myths to legitimate the Stalinist regime.

Interestingly, but by focusing on symbolism and structures she doesn’t pay any attention to form.

Clark then identifies main structural elements of the system of socialist realist novel. They include “consciousness,” “party allegiance,” etc. Discusses temporality of socialist realist novel: it aspired to bridge the gap between the world as it ought to be (“epic,” in Bakhtin’s terms) and as it is (“novel,” in Bakhtin’s terms). “This subordination of historical reality to the preeexisting patterns of legend and history [in socialist realist novel] bridged the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought to be’.” (41) Heroes of this genre realize certain biographic strategies and patterns --- those which they, in turn, are supposed to inculcate in readers. Spread of new metaphors: machine and garden, in particular. Struggle with nature (and its conquest) as a prototypical element, wilderness transformed into garden by the virtue of strong will and other positive features and by the help of strong machines.

Novel as a way to rewrite social relations. An emphasis on ‘large family’ (horizontal relations ‘children’ to ‘father’) at the expense of ‘nuclear family’ (horizontal relations). New ideal types: aviation heroes, arctic explorers, etc.

Postwar emphasis on ‘culture’ and ‘civility’. “In the forties, then, the key terms were ‘culture,’ ‘sicence,’ ‘art’ and ‘technology’.” (196) Funny, here Clark retreats to ‘vulgar’ sociological explanations. “As the Soviet Union became an increasingly industrialized and urbanized modern nation, and as more and more people acquired higher education and were employed as white-collar workers or at least as skilled laborers, the aspirations and interests of its citizens were inevitably affected. The Soviet Union developed into what we in the West would call an ‘organization man’ society.’ Most of its working population achieved, or hoped to achieve, a place within some institutional hierarchy. They sought to rise in the hierarchy of status and enjoy a higher standard of living, and to this end they endeavored to comport themselves as was deemed fit for a person of their standing. The heroic age was at an end.” (197) – this passage argues that people’s tastes have a direct cause-and-effect relationship with his/her social position, namely that if you are an engineer, you want to read novels about science and technology, and not about adventures. A-ha. Also, the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and 1950s wasn’t still much different (in terms of ‘industrialization’ and ‘urbanization’) from that of the 1930s. Something else was responsible for this shift, but not this social change.

Argues that in general, Soviet literary production after Stalin’s death stuck to the structure of socialist realist novel, only certain ‘surface’ elements changed. An emphasis on individuality vs. people as ‘bolts’ in society’s great ‘machine’ (215). 1956: use of Stalinist ‘heroic codes’ to demand truth about Stalinism.