Tag Archives: Suffering

Hope and Acceptance Under Stalinism

While literary figures such as Anna Akhmatova and Nadezhda and Osip Mandelstam presented the bleak realities and oppression of the Stalin era, they also were able to detail the ways in which an unjust reality forced them to adapt. This involved both a tactful acceptance of life under High Stalinism and the maintenance of hope. These two aspects helped drive Akhmatova and the Mandelstam’s to produce authentic artistic works that detailed the progression of the conscious under Stalin’s tyrannical rule.

Nadezhda Mandelstam details the two arrests of her husband Osip in 1934 and 1938 in her book Hope against Hope. Her and her husband’s preparedness is striking, as she explains, “We never asked, on hearing about the latest arrest, ‘What was he arrested for?’ but we were exceptional.” She later claims that Akhmatova would answer, “‘What do you mean what for? It’s time you understood that people are arrested for nothing!'”  if anyone asked “What for?” In this way, Mandelstam reveals that some of those who knew themselves to be at risk had internalized the external threats that they faced into internal logic. How then, could they maintain the motivation of hope to carry on?

Mandelstam speaks of her role to represent something more eternal than the current turmoil that she faced. She claims: “Terror and depotism are always short-sighted.” Through frustration and suffering, Mandelstam persevered because of what she explains as the says is the task for which she has lived. She had to preserve the constrained consciousness of Osip and of the oppressed art of life under Stalin. This task proved to sustain her, as she explains, “There was nothing I could do to alter M.’s fate, but some of his manuscripts had survived and much more was preserved in my memory. Only I could save it all, and this was why I had to keep up my strength.

In “Introduction,” Anna Akhmatova says of the time, “It was a time when only the dead / smiled, happy in their peace.” The mission of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and so many others was to capture this smile for subsequent generations to see. First they had to accept the ill-fated status of their own individuality. But the hope to capture their own suffering and artistic pursuit for sake of future peace kept them on their course.

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!

Eluding Happiness

In the 1958 movie production of the opera Eugene Onegin, Onegin answers, “I am stronger to happiness,” when responding to Tatyana Larina’s love letter. He, just as Tatyana expected, derides Tatyana and condemns her for her lack of self-control, regarding himself as too wise to value frivolous joy . Tragically, over the course of the opera, Onegin eludes both self-control and happiness.

What does this say about how young or fleeting love was viewed in Russian culture and by Pushkin? Both Vladimir Lensky and Tatyana Larina are struck by love’s spontaneity in the first portion of the opera. Lensky proclaims that he does not fear eternity, yet by the second half of the play he has renounced his love for Olga. Tatyana expresses her adoration for Onegin, asking, “are you my guardian angel?” However, she also expresses fear and shame at her expressiveness, and in the final scene of the play, even subdues her admission of love in favor of stability. She deliberately chooses to elude her desires for happiness, if those are to be equated with her lingering love for Onegin. Likewise, Onegin destroys the only sources of happiness in his life. He trifles with Tatyana’s feelings for him and with Vladimir’s feelings for Olga and as a result of these actions, finds himself in a duel with Vladimir wherein Onegin kills his best friend. Ultimately, this opera presents an even bleaker message than many Russian movies and stories. In most tragedies happiness is absent in reality, fate, situations, etc.; In Eugene Onegin happiness knocks on the door of characters, only to be rejected and eluded by them.

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.