Tag Archives: Hierarchy

Glorious Grief

Works of Soviet expression both at the time of the 1917 Revolutions and beyond reveal the juxtaposition of two sentiments swirling around the actual uprising: glory and grief.

The speaker in Vladimir Mayakovsky’s 1917 poem, “Our March” conveys a sense of acceleration of the Russian spirit. “Too slow, the wagon of years, / The oxen of days — too glum / Our god is the god of speed / Our heart — our battle drum,” the speaker says. As this drum and rhythm pulled the rebellion on with strong force, power systems began to break down easily and quickly. As Thompson notes in the textbook, the tsarist regime fell quite suddenly due to a loss of ingrained obedience and gratitude within the people. Between the February and October revolutions, sense of urgency accelerated more under the Bolshevik slogan “Peace, Land, and Bread.”

This acceleration contrasted with the disheartening stagnation that Mayakovsky writes of, and that was expressed in the movie, Forward March, Time!. The speaker declares that there was “never a land of greater grief” than Russia. Yet, glory appeared on the horizon. The speaker of “Our March” exclaims, “Rainbow, give colour and girth / To the fleet-foot steeds of time.” This defiant idea that time could stomp out grief is further expressed in the refrain in Forward March, Time! with the words, “Move on, my land… Many things worn out be erased!” The “geniuses gone” and other oppressive forces will give way to the unleashed expression of grief from the common people, and it will be glorious. “Nameless heroic crowds” emerge around the grieved and impoverished populace.

Although this rainbow may have ultimately proved an illusion, glory and pride remain even after grief returns. The heartbeat still marches on passionately, even if it goes nowhere good. Mayakovsky perhaps expresses the enduring defiant sense of glory best in “My Soviet Passport,” when the speaker finishes the poem saying, “I pull it / from the pants / where my documents are: / read it — / envy me — / I’m a citizen / of the USSR!

Individualism in Petersburg

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?

A Perplexing Pecking Order

Going into this story, I assumed that it would reflect the traditional power structure of the era, establishing men as superior to women, and the old as superior to the young. This story challenged the historic hierarchical systems, portraying them as complicated and nontransparent. I found it effective to look at these structures through the practice of gift giving. The story began with Frol somewhat respectfully giving gifts to win the love of Annushka. He courted her, and initiated any minimal contact the two had. Frol’s sister “did not dare disobey her brother”(476) and had no option but to assist in his schemes. He then, “became daring and forced her to submit to his will”. At this point in the story it was clear that he held the power in their relationship; he courted her and forced her to “submit to his will”. He held power over the women he interacted with. Then, according to this account, Annushka fell for Frol, and she began to give gifts to him: “Annushka became very happy, and told her nurse to take him twenty rubles” (479). By giving Frol a gift, she secured her role as an equal partner in a consensual relationship, where she had the capability to contribute. As it became clear that Frol was a “poor nobleman and a great cheat”(479) while Annushka came from a fairly well-established family, their relationship challenged my assumption that men held significantly more power than women did during this era. Granted, he certainly had the upper hand, but she experienced notable agency for this era.
When the Frol and Annushka eloped, they challenged the notion that older generations held unequivocal power over the generations that followed. The two managed to marry without the approval of Annushka’s family. Then, her parents sent them the valuable and precious “ icon with our blessings” (484), all of a sudden pandering to their daughter, with the hopes of winning her back. The story ended with Stolnik Nadrin-Naschekin saying “No rogue, don’t sell them. I shall give you some money. Take it” (486). This establishes a more traditional power structure: he grants his daughter and her husband his approval, and supports them financial, compromising their previous position of pure independence, but he still had no control in their decision about marriage. Throughout the story, the traditional power structures reverse and then return to their conventional state, offering a unique glimpse of the intricacies of the Russian hierarchical systems to the modern reader.