Tag Archives: Patriotism

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?

Suffering: a Sign of Shame or a Badge of Honor?

In our readings for Session 5, I found the theme of Russian suffering to be the focal point from which religious and nationalistic undertones arose. More specifically, the depiction of such great suffering seemed to pose the question: should Russians be proud or ashamed of the causes and realities of their past hardship?

Within the language Tale of the Destruction of Riazan, suffering seems to be a both an shelter and a result of Russian sin. In section five, as Prince Ingvar begins to complete the task of burying his relatives who have been killed by Batu and the Tatar warriors, the response in the text to these “untimely deaths” is that “all this happened because of our sins”. However, earlier in section three, the author writes a slightly different response to the utter destruction of Riazan: “this happened for our sins.” Is this difference merely do to translation? If not, suffering for sins conjures the phrase, “Jesus died for our sins,” and would seem to signal to Russians that they should be proud of and grateful for their ancestors and religion for absorbing the ugly suffering of the sins of all Russians. If, however, the Mongol invasion occurred because of the sins (perhaps too much bloodthirst or fighting between princes) of those living in the Kievan Rus society, modern Russians would have reason to be ashamed of their predecessors.

In Alexander Blok emphasizes nationalistic pride from Russian suffering in The Scythians. He boasts that, “We, like obedient lackeys, have held up / a shield dividing two embattled powers — / the Mongol hordes and Europe.” John Thompson directly refutes this point in our textbook, claiming that the Russians had nothing to do with stopping the advance of Mongol expansion to the West. Nevertheless, from reading The Scythians, Russians may be compelled to regard their ancestors’ suffering with patriotic pride. I look forward to discussing further the Russian perspective on suffering with particular respect to their founder’s hardships at the hands of the Mongols.