Author Archives: Diego Lasarte

The Fragility of it All

In the film Leviathan, a family and town are thrown into disarray as the society around them slowly decays. The movie is named after Thomas Hobbes work of political theory where he argues that the only way in which a society functions is through its citizens agreeing to respect a social contract in which they act rationally, basically arguing that society as an entity can quickly erode if those within it choose not to respect its legitimacy. In the film, modern Russia is presented as a society that is slowly eroding due to the nihilistic corruption omnipresent in every sector of life. A corruption that stems from a country that doesn’t seem to care whether it lives until the next day, probably because it has been falling apart for approximately the past half-century. It is a country that is constantly drinking itself sick, a country where Ak-47’s are used for fun at barbecues while depressed women try to protect their kids, and a country that tells those kids their future won’t be any different.

The twenty-first century Russia presented in the movie is a Russia that doesn’t believe in itself anymore. Not one of the characters genuinely thinks the world can get better. Dima, the Muscovite lawyer, and the only character that seems to attempt to follow the law is quickly shown the futility of respecting norms when he is kidnapped by the mayor, and afterward flees to Moscow defeated. He also finds it perilously easy to sleep with his best friend’s wife, showing how quickly a personal ethical code can crumble. This lack of faith in a better Russian future shows just how far the ethos of the country has fallen since the fall of the Soviet Union. A society that, for its many flaws, inspired a strong faith in its citizenry that it was working for a brighter future, a factor that modern Russia is sorely missing.

The unsatisfying end of the movie is what truly shows how fragile it all is. It is extraordinarily easy to frame someone for a murder, especially if the person doing the framing is someone with power (even the measly power of a small town mayor). When normal citizens stop choosing to be beholden to laws and to truth, anarchy, and injustice quickly come out. The only way for a society to function is for the citizen to be inspired by the society’s ideals, and that is something sorely missing from the Russia portrayed in Leviathan. 

When Nature Finally Wins in the Battle of Man vs. Nature

Throughout this class, we have looked at cases of humans going up against the natural world. Whether it be them attempting not to freeze in a raging blizzard, or attempting to dig a canal through difficult terrain, the natural state of humans existing in nature seemed to be one of conflict, specifically, a conflict that humans were often winning. However, throughout the parts of Voices from Chernobyl that we read, I was struck by how this terrible tragedy of a nuclear meltdown flipped that script, and put humans in the weaker position.

This shift in dynamic is shown all throughout the book, mainly in how the residents begin to interact with each other and with the land. Their fears manifest themselves through the humans suddenly being on the defensive, always seeming to be worried that their actions would lead to illness or death. This existential fear, the fear that something terrible is just waiting to happen and without any provocation is the opposite of how nature and humans usually interact. Normally, nature is the more passive entity, with humans being the aggressors, spontaneously attacking the natural world which has no mechanism to defend itself.

And what exactly happens when humans start losing this war? The whole way they have structured society begins to erode. They start to lose trust in each other (the soldiers in conflict with the residents simply trying to survive), their sustenance (the food that is keeping them alive is also what is killing them), and generally their normal way of life. It makes one realize how fragile human society really is, and how it completely hinges on man’s domination over nature.

The Fires that Forged Socialism

Nature, to the burgeoning Soviet Union, is a means to a righteous end. The documentary “Magnitogorsk: Forging the New Man” shows the idea that, when combined with the hard work of men, natural resources can be used to change the world. This is summed up early in the documentary when the narrator says that “In 1932, the Soviet Union was characterized by two things: idealism and action. The goal: victory for mankind. This idea is shown throughout the film, specifically in the words the subjects of the film and the narrator choose to use, such as using metaphor to combine industry with nationalism: “Workers brigades are building furnaces for our glorious nation” or how Magnitorosk is frequently defined through its “magnificence” and “strength”.

Viktor Kalmykov, the prolific worker profiled early in the film, is described as a “new man forged by socialism.” The use of the word ‘forged’ is significant because it ties his work manipulating elements of nature to the idea of birthing a new world. An idea central to the Soviet ethos and one creates a complex precedent for how humans are supposed to interact with nature. These terms are not implying a symbiotic relationship, instead they are saying that humans can use nature to make a better world for everyone. While this involves man’s dominion over nature, it is still an idea distinct from a more Cartesian capitalist ethos, where nature is meant to be manipulated for personal gain. No, in Magnitorosk the humans manipulating nature almost seem to mirror nature itself, acting not as individuals thinking primarily of themselves, but rather as parts of a larger process, all working together to keep the Soviet world progressing.

This is complimented by Zabolosky’s perspective in I do not look for harmony in nature, as this poem shows a perspective of nature as something that is not profound on its own, it is described as something that is “puny’ and “weary”, This characterization neatly fits into the narrative of Mangitogorsk, that the grandness of nature is not inherent to the natural world, but rather is created by how humans choose to manipulate it.

Is nature reality or anti-reality?

In Valentin Rasputin’s short essay on Lake Baikal, he describes human’s relationship with nature and how that relationship affects their reality. There is of course a great chasm between modern society and the natural world, but as much as humans have attempted to distance themselves from the natural world, there is still a force pulling them to their most natural state. Rasputin writes about this intense urge to reject aspects of human society: “Oh the spirit of Baikal! This is something special, something living, something that makes you believe in the old legends and ponder with mystical apprehension the extent to which people in some places feel free to do anything they please.”

The theme of being able to do anything that one pleases is explored through the text: “Baikal, it would seem, ought to overwhelm a person with its grandeur and its dimensions—everything in it is big, everything is large-scale, enigmatic, and free—yet on the contrary, it is uplifting.” In this quote, Rasputin argues that nature allows humans to be free and live lives closer to how they were meant to be. This begs the question of whether humans are realest when they are freest. Is the most accurate reality for a human to live in a reality in which they are governed only by their own wants and desires? I think that Rasputin is arguing that freedom brings us closer to our natural state, and thus brings us into a true reality,

Towards the end of the text, Rasputin quotes Tolstoy: “How, in the midst of nature’s charms, can feelings of malice and vengeance or the passion to destroy others like himself possibly remain entrenched in man? It seems that all evil in a person’s heart should vanish when it comes into contact with nature, this spontaneous expression of beauty and goodness.” This quote illustrates perhaps the most important part of Rasputin’s thesis, the description of humans falling from goodness and moving towards the corruption of society. Ever since Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, human’s have lost the sense of innocence omnipresent in the natural world. They have needlessly complicated a world that has literally evolved over millions of years to work well and rationally, and be filled with spontaneous perfection.

Hell is on Earth

In his short story “A Child’s Drawing”, Varlaam Shalamov shows how far a society can fall and how dark human life can be. Set in the horrendous conditions of the Soviet gulag, Shalamov uses a character finding a child’s notebook full of drawings to contrast the isolating dread of conditions in the far North.

The conditions of the world around the characters in the story can only be described as hell-like. Every moment living in the harsh, unforgiving environment of biting cold and long depressingly dark nights is a punishment. This is hell, a land of punishment that can never be escaped. Shalamov describes the weather as a way of purposefully breaking spirits: “Nature in the North is not impersonal or indifferent; it is in conspiracy with those who sent us here.”

This feeling is furthered by a myth told by the narrator towards the end of the story. He describes God literally abandoning the people of Northern Russia, of God condemning them to an existence not truly meant for those He had made in His image. The end of the legend goes: “Later when God grew up and became an adult, he learned to cut out complicated patterns from his pages and created many bright birds. God grew bored with his former child’s word and he threw snow on his forest creation and went south forever.” God has left the people and the land He Had created, never to return. And there is nothing more lonely, more crushing, then feeling that everyday you move further and further away from God’s light.

The Looming Shadow of Predestination

In “The Snowstorm”, Alexander Pushkin reminds the reader that while humans may feel they have personal autonomy, outside forces are often what ends up determining the direction of their lives. Larger things like who your parents are, and the time period and place in which you are born obviously have a major effect on who you become, but it is also smaller things like the books you read or the friends you make that can end up determining big parts of your life, like who you fall in love with, or where you end up working. Pushkin uses the creeping cold of Russia’s winters and the snow that follows, as an example of this. By making the snow almost a character in the story, and showing how it unintentionally shapes the lives of Murya and Burmin, he shows how even great passion and intention can be thwarted by the weather.

The power of the weather at the beginning of this story, specifically the cold, is presented as a fact of life, an arbiter of the quotidian. At one point Murya passively accepts seeing Vladimir less because of the winter, showing how it is an enemy that can’t be beaten: “The winter came and put a stop to their meetings, but their correspondence became all the more active.” However, in other parts of the story, the cold takes a far less passive position. Pushkin shows how the winter actively affects and changes lives by anthropomorphizing it and giving it motivations and goals: “The snowstorm had not subsided; the wind blew in their faces, as if trying to stop [them]”.

All along Pushkin is showing the capacity the brutal cold has to define the perception of a human suffering in it: “But Vladimir scarcely found himself on the open road, when the wind rose and such a snowstorm came on that he could see nothing. In one minute the road was completely hidden; the landscape disappeared in a thick yellow fog, through which fell white flakes of snow; earth and sky merged into one.” This is a testament to the snows power. And it is describing more than a dramatic scene when Pushkin describes the landscape disappearing into the yellow fog, he is describing the passion of a first love disappearing into the annals of a forgotten youth.

A Threat to the Status Quo

In its essence, A Dream in Polar Fog is a rejection of attempts to define a single dominant way of life as the ideal society. It introduces the idea that there are other equally, if not more legitimate, ways to live life than the hegemony of Western civilization. It takes John, a Western man, and immerses him in a culture alien to him, a culture with values antithetical to his own. And yet, he finds meaning in this way of life and ends up eschewing the status quo of his former home. This idea, that there are other successful cultures and societies is exceptionally dangerous to the legitimacy of Western governments. If people realized that there were legitimate alternatives, perhaps there would be a revolution or at least a radical change in those societies.

Two specific examples of this occur in the final pages of the novel. First is the news of the Russian Revolution and the reign of the Bolsheviks reaching John’s ears. Carpenter is the one to inform John of the change, and when he asks John why he doesn’t leave after the Bolshevik’s have taken power, John responds that he is comforted by the fact that all of the people in Chukotka have forgotten that he doesn’t have hands and is crippled: “I feel like a full-fledged, valuable person. Valuable to my family, to my friends, to the little community that peoples Enmyn. Here, I’m a human being – do you understand? – a human being! I have no fear of the Bolshevik’s coming. Naturally, I find their doctrine alarming, their denial of any kind of personal property. But, just think Mr. Carpenter, what property do I have? And meanwhile, those among whom we live are, with rare exception, a trusting folk.” Here John is saying that even though the Chukchi way of life could be described as primitive compared to Western society, they have actually progressed past a lot the ailments that plague the more ‘advanced’ society. The themes of trust, acceptance, and human brotherhood can be found in John’s description of his community. And this is why Carpenter wants John to leave so badly. It is because John, a white man, living happily in a settlement like the one in which he does, is a crack in the foundation of Western ideals. If him living a content life means that the Western way of living can have legitimate alternatives, Carpenter’s life (and the system by which he has made himself wealthy) is delegitimized. This conflict between the two characters is an interesting parallel to the formation of the Soviet Union happening around them, as the Soviet Union was the first true superpower in the twentieth century to challenge the top-down, capitalist power structures of the world.

This interaction is similar to John’s final interaction with his mother. As she leaves, saying goodbye to him for the final time, and after seeing him fully immerse himself in the Chukchi life, she says, heartbreakingly: “Oh, John! My boy! It would have been easier for me see you dead than like this!” This extreme statement shows exactly how much John’s mother’s reality hinges on her idea of supremacy over the ‘savages’. Her whole society hinges on the supremacy of whiteness, and her status as a wealthy landowner in Canada hinges on values of greed and competition that would be alien to the Chukchi. And, so desperate to keep her place in that society, she would rather see her son dead, than see him live a life that threatens the status quo.

The Complexities of how Cultures Interact

A Dream in Polar Fog is the first story in which we have seen a perspective on Russian culture from a non-Russian. And it is fascinating to see him (in this case a Canadian named John MacLennan) attempt to interact with the native people of Siberia. His interactions with the indigenous people create a sharp contrast between his comfortable modern world, where he longed for adventure and danger, and their far more severe and intense world, where they don’t necessarily have the luxury of yearning for another life. Everything is different, and they both feel as though their culture is superior. John constantly thinks of the natives in a negative light, calling them “savages” and describing them as “unwashed.” The natives take a less harsh tone but are just as critical. They don’t seem to understand the white man, confused by the way they speak, interact with each other, and what they choose to value.

When comparing these two cultures, it is clear that one has more influence than the other. Throughout the last few centuries, Western culture has rapidly encroached on indigenous cultures around the world, and Orvo feels the pressures this creates. He is constantly worrying about letting down the traditional beliefs of his ancestors and at one point, while lost in thought, he finds himself feeling guilty about letting the foreign and seductive feeling of greed win: [he was] sure that he had made a mistake in submitting to the worst of temptations – greed. Yes, it went without saying that those goods were excellent. And yet they had lived without such thing, lived as Orvo’s ancestors had done, without tobacco, tea, the bad joy-making water, woven cloth, metal needles, and had managed to hunt with bows and arrows. These new things, brought by the white men to Chukchi shores, had only complicated life. The sweetness of sugar also held a bitter tang.” Orvo is struggling with a conflict we have seen throughout this class, a conflict of tradition and simplicity with technology and wealth. A battle between the old and new that was constantly being waged in the 20th century.

However, even though Orvo is struggling with John’s culture, he still manages to try and understand where John is coming from. At one point he figures that as much as he is alienated by John’s way of life, John must be alienated by the Chukchi way of life, saying: “That world [the white man’s world] had not set well with him, but who can vouch that the white men like Chukchi way of life? All people live their own way, and there’s no use making another person do as you do, changing his customs and habits.”

And, after the initial conflict, this becomes a common theme throughout the first ten chapters, even with the divide between the characters, John and Orvo manage to connect in a basic but profound way. At one point John is thirsty, and at first he reacts with disgust as Orvo gives him water in a primitive flask, warm from being kept underneath his coat, but then John has a change of heart after he feels refreshed by the water and Orvo’s generosity: “John managed a smile. He had wanted to show his gratitude with it, but something sparked inside him, and the resulting smile was sincere, not forced.” This interaction shows that underneath the tension between their cultures there is a connection, and (perhaps undermining the argument Tolstoy was making in the Cossacks that Olenin’s relationship with the Cossack culture was largely superficial) that there are unbreakable bonds that can be brought together between all humans no matter where they come from.

Life Through Rose-Colored Glasses

In these works, we are shown how circumstances can define an experience. Two people can look at the same view of a beautiful sunset, but if one’s heart is full of love and the other has just experienced a terrible heartbreak, they could very well be looking at completely different things. This theme is explored extensively in “Caucasus” by Ivan Bunin, where the story included the radically-different perspectives of two different characters, as well as in Pushkin’s poetry, where themes of love and heartbreak are analyzed.

In “Caucasus”, the narrator describes the ways in which a companion can color an experience, in this case turning a cruel and isolated place into a peaceful and serene vacation: “I had lived a little while near Sochi when I was young and alone, and all my life I’d remembered autumn evenings among black cypresses and cold, grey waves …. She grew pale whenever I reminded her of this, and said, “But this time you’ll be with me in that mountain jungle near the sea.” Love has changed not only what is inside of him, but also how he perceives the things around him. It is amazing how much less daunting the world becomes when you have someone to share it with. It is far easier to have the confidence to follow your instincts, to face your fears and spurn societal conventions if you have someone a partner by your side.

Of course, the flip side of this is represented in “Caucasus” as well, with the story of the rejected husband. He is of course presented as a villain for most of the story, the controlling, evil man thwarting a beautiful and pure romance. But the story ends on a twist, it switches narrators, ending with a description of the husband’s suicide. He literally could not live another day without his wife by his side. It was almost paradoxical how he knew his life would be meaningless without his wife, so he dominated and controlled her, but that very desperation was the reason she could not bear him and fell in love with another man. It shows how love is intoxicating and thus dangerous. Because of love’s immense power, and the ways in which it can make a life worth living, it is unbearable to lose. It begs the question of whether it is better to love fleetingly and see how wonderful life can be, or never love at all and never experience the pain of its end.

Love, it seems, is both what makes life worth living and simultaneously unbearable. But no matter what it does seems like an essential part of life. Pushkin argues exactly this in his poem “The Hills of Georgia”: “For thus my heart must burn and love – because it’s true, That not to love – it knows no way.” He is arguing that the heart only knows that it is alive if it is feeling something. Feeling, even if it causes pain and sadness, is a necessary component of life. The heart lives by breaking and thus all emotions, joy and heartbreak alike, are what gives life meaning.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Communal Living

Perhaps the biggest change to a peasant’s daily life after the revolution took place in Russia was the idea of living on worker’s collectives, complicated institutions where Russians would live and share the work as well as the profits communally. Both “Matryona’s Home” and  “Harvesting” shows the profound beauty of a simple and elegant life such as this, but they also show how easy this way of life is to overly-romanticize and how it frequently falls short of it’s ideals.

In “Harvesting”, the action of sleeping is described a lot more than one would normally expect in a plot-driven fictional short story like this, and it is described as full and peaceful. This shows the satisfaction of an honest days work, and the serenity of being in harmony with the Earth. “My blood hums pleasantly, then I’m out of my body swimming somewhere, and I experience a sensation of perfect bliss. It’s strange, but I am aware that I’m sleeping-I am consciously, sweetly asleep. The earth carries me swiftly along on her bosom, but I am sleeping, I know that. Never again in all my life have I slept like that-with my whole body, to my heart’s content, without measure.”

Even the dog feels this satisfaction of being a part of a working machine: “Far away, beyond the forest, the large red sun slowly sinks into the deep blue haze. It’s good here on earth, pensive, peaceful. Under the chairman’s table, Borzya, our infinitely good-tempered scamp of a dog, lies curled up, sleeping peacefully.” This quote is essential because it hows how beautiful and untroubled a moment in life can be. It implies that there can be a harmony between living things on earth, drawing on themes of bounty and plenty, arguing that there is plenty for all of us on ‘good earth’.

However this peaceful way of thinking about life is interrupted by the realities of a boss, Chairman Alekseich, fruitlessly trying to feed a starving nation by trying desperately to up the farm’s production and cracking down on insubordination to increase the efficiency. This shows the conflict reality has with this utopic lifestyle, and thus its frequent shortcomings.

This contrast between the moments of ‘bliss’ the workers experience, and the unwavering outside forces making this bliss largely impossible and unsustainable is also shown in “Matryona’s Home” in the difference between how the narrator expects Matryona’s life to be and how it actually is. It is clear that Matryona believes in the importance and dignity of her work, yet she still gets caught up in the dissatisfaction of the peasants and takes part in their destructive drunken revelry. And the narrator himself is shocked by the stink of the factories and harshness of the deforestation, as opposed to the peaceful Russian countryside he had pictured.