{"id":992,"date":"2020-04-17T02:50:58","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T02:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=992"},"modified":"2020-04-17T02:50:58","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T02:50:58","slug":"sharikov-and-the-soviet-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/lmcnett\/sharikov-and-the-soviet-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharikov and the Soviet Union"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although <\/span>Heart of a Dog <\/span><\/i>is clearly satirical in its nature, the backdrop of Bolshevism and the New Economic Policy are central to the novella\u2019s themes and are among the aspects of Soviet culture and society that Bulgakov critiques.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The aspect of the story I find most fascinating is, perhaps, the most obvious–Bulgakov\u2019s construction and creation of a human-like figure (which is completely unnatural and artificial).\u00a0 When I was first reading the story, I, like I\u2019m sure others did, thought immediately of Mary Shelley\u2019s <\/span>Frankenstein<\/span><\/i>, where a professor also artificially creates another being.\u00a0 But, what struck me in <\/span>Heart of a Dog<\/span><\/i> as opposed to <\/span>Frankenstein<\/span><\/i> is how Sharik (or at that point Sharikov) was able to assimilate and even succeed in Soviet society. \u00a0 In <\/span>Frankenstein <\/span><\/i>the creature is immediately neglected and rejected by society because of his foreignness, unnaturalness, and differentness.\u00a0 However, Sharikov is able to succeed– he finds a state-sponsored job, and even finds a wife-of-sorts (although this doesn\u2019t end up working out).\u00a0 Additionally, he is depicted as a stereotypical Soviet man: smoking, drinking vodka, and swearing. To sum it up, despite his artificial, unnatural, and planned existence he is able to work his way through the Soviet system. I saw this fact as a commentary on the unnaturalness of the Soviet society itself–that Sharikov, despite his aburdities, is able to \u2018make it\u2019 in a \u00a0Soviet system that Bulgakov could be saying is just as unnatural, forced, and absurd as Sharikov.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a completely random note, I know we have talked about how \u0428\u0430\u0440\u0438\u043a is a common name for dogs in Russia, was the case before this story or did that trend follow the publication of this story? \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although Heart of a Dog is clearly satirical in its nature, the backdrop of Bolshevism and the New Economic Policy are central to the novella\u2019s themes and are among the aspects of Soviet culture and society that Bulgakov critiques.\u00a0\u00a0 The aspect of the story I find most fascinating is, perhaps, the most obvious–Bulgakov\u2019s construction and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-10-building-the-ussr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}