{"id":994,"date":"2020-04-17T03:33:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T03:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=994"},"modified":"2020-04-17T03:45:52","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T03:45:52","slug":"social-critique-in-the-heart-of-the-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/ewallace\/social-critique-in-the-heart-of-the-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Critique in The Heart of the Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0<em>The Heart of the Dog,\u00a0<\/em>Mikhail Bulgakov uses satire to make a commentary the Communist Party. Bulgakov uses the storyline of a dog undergoing surgery to become a &#8220;new soviet man&#8221; to criticize the Communist party&#8217;s practice of eugenics, which they believed would allow for the betterment of the Soviet people in future generations. After the operation, the dog, Sharik, exhibits immoral behavior such as sexually harassing women and causing a pipe to flood the household. Preobrazhensky blames this behavior on the transplant operation and the use organs of an &#8220;unfit person&#8221;, an alcoholic criminal. The fantastical situation and the Preobrazhensky&#8217;s rationale, blaming the behavior on the status of the organ donor rather than the absurd nature of the experiment, expose the hypocrisy in the Soviet eugenics ideology. Ultimately the Preobrazhensky himself denounces eugenics, faced with the failure of his experiment. Preobrazhensky in the story symbolizes the bourgeoisie and has disdain for the proletariat, represented in Sharik, so Preobrazhensky&#8217;s denunciation of eugenics is significant as he admits that a peasant could give birth to a genius. Preobrazhensky also exhibits significant denial as he spends most of the time in his apartment, symbolically sheltered from the social and political change of the outside world, where he can live out his own experiments. This contrast of Preobrazhensky&#8217;s world versus the outside world shows the absurdity of both.\u00a0 Ultimately, Sharik exposes the experimental nature of the Communist Revolution as an unnatural process that is societally irresponsible, premature, and uninformed. Bulgakov&#8217;s use of satirical elements provides an acute critique on the political climate and society of Soviet Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0The Heart of the Dog,\u00a0Mikhail Bulgakov uses satire to make a commentary the Communist Party. Bulgakov uses the storyline of a dog undergoing surgery to become a &#8220;new soviet man&#8221; to criticize the Communist party&#8217;s practice of eugenics, which they believed would allow for the betterment of the Soviet people in future generations. After the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1026,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-994","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\/994","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\/1026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}