The reading this week, “State Suppression of Baikal Activism” an article by Kate Pride Brown, was obviously a radical departure from the literature, poetry, and art we have been analyzing each week. But, in a way, it had the similar goal of teaching the reader about Russian identity, and its people’s relationship with their country. The article posits that “Democracy has never successfully taken root in Russian soil.” A claim the author backs up by describing a country with an ambivalent relationship to the law, an ambivalence that seems to influence every part of a Russian’s daily life.

The author defines this ambivalence as “Legal nihilism.” A term that measures the willingness of Russians to break the law and the willingness of the law to unjustly target Russians. It is the pervasive idea in Russian society that laws are political tools, meant to be broken and abused. It seems that how widespread this idea is across Russia is a testament to how cynicism is intimately tied to the mindset of the average Russian. Russian society has suffered one setback after another, not too mention facing the brunt of two world wars, countless devastating famines, and a series of autocratic regimes with an affection for prison camps. These tragedies are even more terrible when contrasted with the potential Russian society has shown throughout its history. From its immense and powerful empire to its trailblazing step as the first society to (arguably) successfully realize a Marxist revolution, Russia has often had the latent desire and means to be a truly successful world power.

Of course, this modern pessimistic mindset was exacerbated by the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union and the turbulent nineties, but this reading makes it clear that this way of corrupt governing was present in the tsarist autocracy and throughout the span of the Soviet Union. This is clearly shown when Jennie Sutton is at the courthouse arguing against an unfounded accusation and when she succeeds in getting only the police chief on her side, her case is dismissed. Russians, correctly, see the law as situational and volatile, which makes life unpredictable and which will weigh down on the spirit of a people, as well as impact their relationship with the concept of power. And if power is malleable and impermanent, it will inspire nothing more than a culture of irreverence and skepticism.

We’ve discussed extensively the boundary between man and nature and how such boundaries have been bridged. In this sense, we’re talking about domestic vs. natural, or humans vs. animals. My favorite example of this is evident in Pasternak’s “Sister my life…”. Through his involvement with the “Futurism” movement, he embodies a positive perspective toward the future as he details the merging of the human and natural world. While present in much of the works we have read, the merging of the human and natural world was not present in Kata Pride Brown’s Saving the Sacred Sea. Typically it is nature that plays victim to man, such as in the case of deforestation or industrialization, but it seems like in this piece, nature is posing the problem to man. No longer do we see man vs. nature but more man vs. man, battling for domination and power. The Foreign Agent law was designed to target specific NGOs who “had been especially meddlesome in the affairs of the state and business elites” (184). More generally, Brown states that “law was created to serve as a weapon of the state against its opponents” (182), but it is evident through this notion of legal nihilism that laws such as The Foreign Agent law is used as a weapon against its very own people. For me, this piece had less to do with the problematic dynamic between man and nature and more to do with the conflict among humans.

Instead of my usual approach to these blog posts— to derive themes of Russian Romanticism from weekly assigned readings— I instead want to focus this week’s entry on aspects of human versus nature interaction within the poem “Art” by Nikolai Zabolotsky and last week’s fairytale “Vasilisa the Beautiful.” Specifically, I intend to find similarity between the narrator of “Art” and his deference to nature, alongside Vasilisa’s goodwill towards her environment, i.e. her tying of Baba-Yaga’s birch-tree with ribbon, and her feeding of Baba-Yaga’s guard animals with pie and bread. Together, I hope to better understand the theme of positive retribution by Nature throughout Russian Romanticism. I also hope to elaborate on the human’s place in Russian Romanticism: namely, man’s often overt control and thus destruction of The Natural World.

In revisiting Vasilisa’s escape, I want to play close attention to the portion right after Vasilisa runs out in the passage of the house; her subsequent interactions with Baba-Yaga’s cat, dog, birch-tree, and gate each illustrates a human giving back to the Natural World. In a matter of lines, Grumbler-Rumbler the Cat rushes to claw Vasilisa but Vasilisa “throws him a pie,” followed by the dog darting at Vasilisa and Vasilisa giving him a piece of bread (“Vasilisa the Beautiful” 14). Then, Vasilisa interacts with the birch-tree and the gate, each of which respectively attempts to “lash out [her] eyes” and “shut” Vasilisa in (14). Before they hinder her, she ties the birch-tree with ribbon and greases the gate’s hinges. Vasilisa’s attention to the animals, the tree, and the gate ultimately saves her from their (and Baba-Yaga’s) wrath; her thought to give back to nature yields positive retribution.

Upon waking up, Baba-Yaga becomes infuriated and after interrogating (more like berating) the cat, dog, birch-tree, and gate, each of the four reiterates Vasilisa’s attention to them—each testimony reaffirming the theme of positive retribution that ultimately saves Vasilisa.

“…I let her pass, for she gave me a pie. I served you for ten years, Baba-Yaga, but you never gave me so much as a crust of bread” (15).

“…I let her pass, for she gave me some bread. I served you for ever so many years, but you never gave me so much as a bone” (16).

“…I let her pass, for she bound my branches with a ribbon. I have been growing here for ten years, and you never even tied them with a string” (16).

“…I let her pass, for she greased my hinges. I served you for ever so long, but            you never even put water on them” (16).

Note the repetition in these verses. Even though we can assume that their repetitive nature is at large due to the mode which fairytales were passed down through Russian history (verbally and from memory), I also attribute the repetition of these phrases to emphasize the fact that in addition to nature’s powerful existence, it is also a retributive force. In lecture, we discussed a personified Nature as “both friend and enemy”(Lecture Sep. 10, 2018) I think the author of this fairytale chooses to emphasize this sentiment not only through the unforeseen compliance of these animated characters, but also through the compositional choice to repeat and draw attention to these characters and their sentiments.

In connection to this week’s poem “Art” by Nikolai Zabolotsky, I also notice both the characterization of the speaker, and Zabolotsky’s form in constructing his argument, each lend value to the theme of positive retribution by nature (and perhaps to a similar but negative force possessed by man). To start, the first four stanzas of Zabolotsky’s poem reference the ways that man reaps the benefits of his natural environment. “Tree” comes with a description of “natural column of wood;” cow is “a solid body,/ set on four endings/” with “two horns like the moon in its first quarter” (Zabolotsky 2, 9-10, 12). A house is “an edifice of wood,/ a tree-cemetery,/ a cabin of corpses,/ a gazebo of the dead—“ all for “man” who is “sovereign of the planet,/ ruler of the woodlands,/ emperor of cattle flesh” (17-20; 25-27). Notice the utilization of epithets to emphasize the severity of power that man enacts on the natural environment. Only at the end of the poem does the narrator “a faceless man,” pleasantly interact with the natural world (33). He blows through a flute, and sings to nature, his “words [flying] into the world[, becoming] objects” (36). Here, just like Vasilisa does through her interactions with the animals and nature around her, our narrator reaches harmony with his environment:

“The cow made porridge for me,/

the tree read me a story,

and the word’s dead little houses/ jumped up and down, as if alive” (37-40).

Again, take note of the repetition—namely the anaphora that begins in each line: “the cow… the tree… the word’s dead little houses.” It is stylistically similar to the writing form through which Zabolotsky introduces the cow, the tree, the houses, and man at the onset of each stanza. Each of these methods emphasizes power and in addition to the power of nature that we both felt in “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” and heard about in lecture, Zabolotsky provides us also a power initiated and sustained by man. The epithets I mention before are competing with the Natural World. There is a component to the natural environment’s “force diagram,” if you will, that was not accounted for in either “Vasilisa the Beautiful” or in many of the other pieces we have reviewed in lecture; that is—the opposing force of man, whether that is positive or negative.

Now if I continue this physics analogy, it would make perfect sense for man’s impact on the natural environment to be negative, even caustic. In order to reach net equilibrium, i.e. natural harmony, would it not be necessary for humans to reap the benefits of the world around them? Though I do not think that this conclusion is what either of these literary pieces intends to prove, I do however, think that Zabolotsky’s emphasis on man’s relentless attitude towards utilizing the natural world is an important reaction to the power of nature. What are your thoughts? Does Zabolotsky’s “Art” lead you to think differently about the themes of nature and its omnipotence throughout Russian Romantic literature?

Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya attacks the historic idolization of the Russian country peasant life. The character’s realization of their country lives’ lack of opportunity and monotony causes a suicidal catharsis and the detrition of their already frail familial relationships. Chekhov is attempting to destroy the aggrandized peasant life shown in a novel such as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina where members of the aristocracy vacation into manual labor and instead show the consequences and horrors of peasant country life.

Famously, Levin in Anna K temporarily inhabits peasant labor in the drawn-out mowing scene. Levin seeks out the life of his peasants for, “so he loved the peasantry in contrast to the class of people he did not love, and so he knew the peasantry as something in contrast to people in general. In his methodical mind, certain forms of peasant life acquired clear shape.” Levin exalts and vacations to peasantry for its simplicity in comparison to the highly political life of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the simple life of labor, Levin can find purpose and clear meaning to his action.

Tolstoy’s Levin is problematic, however, in that it idolizes peasant life but does not show the harsh realities that accompany country life. Levin is able to vacation into manual labor and embedded (to use Giddens terminology) society but does not immigrate. Tolstoy fails to show the harsh realities accompanying the lifestyle Levin visits.

Chekhov does display the harsh consequences of assimilation into country life. Unlike the aggrandized praise for the natural environment presented in Anna K, Chekhov’s characters display the real hardships that accompany an embedded and labor-filled life. Astrov, the country doctor who has experienced modernized society before, remarks, “it’s our life—our provincial, parochial Russian life—I can’t stand. I despise it with my whole heart… I work harder than anyone in the district. You know that. Fate lashes out at me from all sides.” Instead of romanticizing peasant country life, Chekov accurately show is harsh reality and the poor quality of life manual labor begets. More so, Chekhov continually emphasizes the lack of opportunity and mobility in country residences—they have no opportunity like Levin. As Tolstoy’s Levin romanticizes his two days of labor, Chekov notes the consequences of such a life.

One of the largest themes in “Uncle Vanya” is the passage of time and change over time. The arrival of the professor and his young wife in this country home catalyzes self-reflections, arguments and regrets with regards to how the characters have spent their time. Starting with the doctor, Astrov, Marina tells him honestly that, “You were young then, and handsome…you’ve lost your looks. And you like your vodka” (63). Astrov and Uncle Vanya share a discontent that time is passing them by and they are facing a stark and limited future. As Uncle Vanya reports despondently, “Everything’s old. I’m the same as always. Well, maybe a bit worse” (66). Not only is time passing, but any change it brings is for the worst.

Astrov remains obsessed with this idea of change in the form of the environment. In his rant about how the forests are being destroyed by lazy Russians, he despairs, “There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, game animals are all but extinct, the climate is being ruined, and day by day the land gets poorer and uglier” (72). These remarks appear very forward-thinking, especially for the late 19^th century. Yet the character who takes his views to heart is the young and in-love Sonya. This suggests few are as enamored with this idea of taking care of the environment. Regardless, the doctor continues later, equating healthy forests with gentler climates and thereby gentler people. This remark presents a hopeful possibility for harsh Russia (and Russians).

The artwork Astrov dedicates himself to also represents this change over time as he depicts the successive diminution of the forest in the country. In showing the pictures to Yelena, his conclusion, “What we have here is basically a picture of gradual but unmistakable decay” reiterates the negative change time has wrought. In this story, the deterioration of the environment mirrors the social decay prevalent in the household as the characters become listless; they become obsessed with beauty over their other passions and works and drink themselves silly. Yet, the ending of the story provides a sobering glance of the future as once the professor and Yelena leave, every aspect of life for the others returns to as it was before. Powerless in the face of time, the best they can do is live as the world deteriorates around them. Or do they render themselves powerless by not trying?

While reading these short stories in particular, I wonder, how, if at all, does the commentary on human and nature in these works relate to environmentalism during the time periods that they were written? What was the context of environmentalism during these times? While the concept of environmentalism as we know it now is (as far as I’ve learned) very modern, the core of valuing nature is evidently long-lived. The fact that every poem, story, and work of art that we have read has any focus on nature demonstrates that all of these authors perceive nature to be, at the very least, worth noticing. Of course, most go further to honor nature or contemplate its complexity. Ultimately, I wonder how art that values nature relates to environmentalist ideologies through time. 

The Bear Hunt gives light to that relationship on an individual scale for Tolstoy.

While this story stands out as a nonfictional anecdote, both its context and Tolstoy’s artistic narration reveal his evolving perspective on how humans and nature should interact. As Tolstoy recounts his adventure, it is sometimes unclear whether it’s a “Bear Hunt” or a “Human Hunt.” Nonetheless, the title, and the details at the end of the story both point to Tolstoy’s pride in his victory. Every characterization of the bear depicts him as either charmingly smart, or as “mad with fright.” Tolstoy builds up a strong sense of empathy for the “huge creature,” and yet the concluding lines of the story seem to show that he feels he deserves respect and victory for dominating the animal (117). He stuffs the bear, and keeps it in his room – a constant reminder of man’s ability to dominate nature. On the other hand, the bear only left minimal scars that “can scarcely be seen” (117). Although, when the bear is attacking Tolstoy, Tolstoy is obviously inferior, by the end, he juxtaposes the damage of either player against the other in terms of their ultimate outcome.

When Tolstoy wrote this piece in 1872 reflecting on his experience from 1858, he revealed a contradictory perception of nature; he acknowledges the bear’s intelligence and emotional capacity, yet he ultimately views the bear’s purpose as to serve him. However, two decades after the incident, he decided to stop hunting on “humanitarian grounds” (108). Had Tolstoy written this work 10 years later, I presume that he would have depicted the adventure, particularly the ending, very differently.

I waded through ‘Among Animals and Plants’ without really capturing the overarching theme, the topic that unites all of the story’s complex parts. I caught the first glimpse of a theme on page 161 when Platonov describes Fyodorov’s longing for the world beyond his village, stating that, “Out there was science, fame, higher education, the new Moscow Metropolitan railway, while here were only animals, the forest and his family…”. Throughout the story, the reader is reminded of Fyodorov’s desire to see the larger and more developed world. He expresses a hunger for breaking away from his small village life surrounded by animals and plants, wanting to break into the world of theater, science, fame, and the new Moscow Metropolitan railway that he hears about on the radio. Each time he brings up this different world, he compares it to his own – a depressing life with nothing to do but work and worry. We see his longing in the many instances he uses his imagination to better the dull and meaningless situation he’s in. On page 168 Fyodorov dreams up an entire world to identity unknown passengers on the train, delving deep into a fictional story about the woman’s bloody and tear-saturated handkerchief. On the following page, he describes his reading tactic of starting a book in the middle or end pages to avoid the monotony of the beginning, as the writer “is just thinking”. All of these instances combined, I had a grasp on the fact that Fyodorov was unhappy in his life, yearning for something more creative, exciting, and rewarding.

Scanning the story over once more, a quote on page 162 caught my eye: “Next a choir of young girls’ voices began a song about heroic socialism, about happy people, about interesting life…the sense of the music remained clear: people should live in bliss, not in need and torment”. The key word here is “heroic socialism” and once I caught on to that, I was able to understand living in “bliss” to mean existentialism and conversely, living in “need and torment” to represent the current socialist state of Russia at that time. With this, I found that overarching theme, then coloring the way I understood the metaphors I didn’t originally pick up on. For example, I was confused by the extreme anger Fyodorov felt toward ants at the beginning of the story, claiming that “They spend all their lives dragging goods into their kingdom; they exploit every solitary animal, both big and small, that they can dominate; they know nothing of the universal common interest and live only for their own greedy, concentrated well-being” (156). Fyodorov’s view of the ants is simply a reflection of what he sees in himself, and accordingly, his disapproval of socialism.

Something seemed off to me the first time I read this story – Fyodorov was clearly unhappy but I wasn’t able to pinpoint why. Taking into consideration the political climate of the time, it makes sense that Fyodorov feels unfulfilled, craving the freedom to dictate his own development in a socialist world.

Something that stood out to me while reading about the Russian forest and its creatures was the blurring of lines between the human and animal worlds, specifically in the Zinovieva-Annibal pieces. The two short stories, “The Bear Cubs” and “Wolves” depicted different interactions between the worlds. “The Bear Cubs” showed animals entering the human world whereas “Wolves” showed a frenzied girl cross a boundary between humans and animals.

The bear cubs in Zinovieva-Annibal’s story were introduced as the “two friends” of the narrator. Though bears are often feared in human worlds, the cubs are described as having teeth “softer than the touch of [my] hands” (4). Because the cubs are raised in the human world, they lose much of their status as terrifying creatures of the forest. As they grow larger, they regain their ability to be perceived as a threat to human safety, despite their deep love of humans and the lack of conflict between them thus far. Though the mother and daughter who raised the Mishka’s valued love over the hierarchy of humans and animals, both bear cubs died in the end of the story because of preconceived notions that animals are inherently dangerous to, as well as subject to the wrath of, humans.

The boundary crossed in Zinovieva-Annibal’s “Wolves” followed an emotional viewing of a pack of wolves being captured in a hunt and one wolf receiving a fatal wound that caused it much suffering. In order for the humans in the story to hunt wolves, they use hunting dogs. The use of an animal to hunt another animal implies a certain hierarchy of skill that humans cannot compensate for on their own. Despite this implied power dynamic, the hunters capture the wolves to bring them to the Tsar’s hunt, where they break one leg on each world so “they won’t run away too fast… and also so they can’t attack” (21). After seeing the brutality of the hunt, Verochka enters a frenzy, she howls and runs recklessly through the forest only to get tangled in one of the traps set for the wolves. Verochka is berated for her actions and laughed at, even though she is the only one seeing the wolves with compassion instead of bloodlust.

One theme represented in these short-stories that fascinated me was the idea that there is a clear and important distinction between the lives of humans and their animal counterparts. And that the different experiences are profound, so much so that it defines what it means to be human. This difference poses a difficult question: who is freer, humans or animals? While humans have criss-crossed the world with roads, trains and planes, discovered the secret laws of our universe, and literally broken through the boundary of the cosmos, humans overwhelmingly feel trapped and overwhelmed by the society that they have created. That is in sharp contrast to a bear walking through the woods, able to urinate wherever it wants (satisfy its primal urges) and be able to sleep soundly, not plagued by existential dread or the thought of billions of its kind needlessly suffering around the world. The animal’s only worry while sleeping is if it will eat that night, or be eaten.

In the short story Among Animals and Plants by Andrey Platonov, the main character Fyodorov describes when he would watch sleeping dogs, cats, and chickens: “They had chewed with their mouths and pronounced blissful sounds, sometimes half-opening eyes blind with sleep and then closing them again, stirring a little, wrapping themselves in their own bodies’ warmth and moaning from the sweetness of their own existence.” These animals aren’t burdened by their own existence the same way in which humans are. Of course, their lives are often less secure and predictable, but they have no conception of good or bad, of being embarrassed or heartbroken. Their lives are governed by the far simpler impulses of hunger, self-protection, and sexual desire.

Because of this blissful ignorance, and lack of self-reflection, Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal argues that animals don’t fear death in the same way humans do. In Wolves, Annibal argues that “‘Well, but what does it matter that we’re sinful?’ ‘Well, then, we need to repent.’ ‘Well, so?’ ‘Well, now that only God knows. Even death isn’t fearful for an animal, see, because, like I explained to you, an animal has no sin. Man’s the only one has to worry about death.’” She is arguing that because animals don’t have any conception of sin, they are liberated from the shadow of death that hangs over humans their whole life.

This is not to say that the stories are always arguing that the added complexity of human life is a negative. I was struck while reading the same story, Wolves by Annibal, the description of the invalid mother, who describes the beauty of society while telling her daughter about her connection to the broader world in spite of her disease: “I can go all over Russia, over the whole earth, through mountains and villages and cities, into the monasteries and wild forests . . . And sons and daughters-all God’s children on the earth, and you, my loved ones, are also in my heart. For there’s an endless amount of room in the human heart, and there’s more of love’s flame than is needed to set earth on fire, but that fire of love does no harm, like the burning bush, the fire did no harm, but burned, and has not burned out.” No matter the difficulty of human life, there is a profound beauty in the human heart’s capacity to love and to connect with other human’s hearts. A privilege that is (probably) found in only one species on Earth.