The satirization of power structures looms large over the works of “The Nose,” “A Guide to a Renamed City,” and Lietenant Kizhe. In the midst of a new city, St. Petersburg, that incorporated aspects of all of Europe, and an increasingly centralized and powerful political structure, wherein collectivism and obligation to the state was of paramount importance, I’d like to focus on the concept of the individual. How is he or she presented in each of these works, and to what extent does he or she matter?

Lietenant Kizhe both opens and closes with a sleeping Tsar. Paul’s unawareness positions him as the center of ridicule in the movie, yet also makes a statement on the importance of an individual: namely, that there is none. The individual is merely a scapegoat for the masses in Lietenant Kizhe. When faced with exile, Count von Pahlen and his uncle uphold the fictional character of Kizhe. Yet, when the guardsmen send Tsar Paul an insulting letter, they have no individual to load there problems unto. Tsar Paul claims that a “state is lonely without faithful servants.” Ironically, his one faithful servant is no more than an apparition in Tsar Paul’s world, where personal connection and individualism counts for less than nothing when compared with rules, positions, and respect. Thus the film presents a lonely reality, not because of the absence of society, but because of the absence of an individual.

Joseph Brodsky claims that St. Petersburg “is the city where it’s somehow easier to endure loneliness than anywhere else: because the city itself is lonely”. This is not because there is an absence of people or culture, but rather because there is an absence of an individual identity for the city. It is split between Leningrad and Peter, many different Western influences, capital or disconnected city.

In “The Nose,” by Nikolai Gogol, we see the effects of a part dismembered from a whole, on an individual anatomical scale. Kovalyov loses his nose and subsequently loses his identity as a confident man looking for a promotion and young ladies to seduce. The Nose is able to completely break off from the whole and hide as an individual. To what extent does this mean that the part needs the whole, or that the whole needs the part? Furthermore, how much does the individual need the state? How much does the state need the individual?