The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

The Stalin years 205

act of reading is an important marker of virtue for Dasha, the novel’s most positive heroine. Amid disintegrating households, ailing children, and ripening treason, she spends hours at her undusted desk, struggling to grasp the truths contained in a Marxist-Leninist textbook. The lessons are learned. Early in the novel, soon after Gleb’s return, the couple visits their daughter Nyurka in the children’s home. When the matron – whom Dasha suspects of stealing from the children – remarks that “Your Nyurochka is such a lovely little girl,” Dasha tenses up: Stop that, she says, “they’re all equal here, and they all ought to be lovely” (p. 39). While Gleb is away at party headquarters and Dasha is otherwise occupied, Nyurka dies from malnourishment; she “flickers out” in the children’s home. Her mother, we are told, is in anguish but steels herself to conceal it from others. Never do we see that she regrets her decision to abandon her present child for the sake of the equitable flourishing of future life.

Gleb has an equally tensed moment, but for him it is formative. He has been home only a few days and is campaigning to be elected head of the Factory Committee. His most persuasive qualifications are his Civil War stigmata. He has looked death in the face and – he tells the meeting – “I’m as tough as Koshchey the Deathless” (p. 67). Do you need proof? He tears off his tunic and shirt. By the light of the oil-lamp (recalling the vessels placed before holy icons) the assembled voters see: wherever he touches his chest, side, and neck, “purple, pallid scars” show forth. “ ‘Shall I take down my trousers?’ ” he then shouts. “ ‘I’m wearing the same sort of decorations lower down . . . Choose me for this job!’ ” None of the workers dares to approach Gleb. “They looked at his naked body, all knotted and scarred. Dismayed and shocked by his words, they steamed with sweat and were silent, glued to their seats” (p. 68).

Significantly, Gleb’s war wounds are all on the surface. He seems to have suffered no lasting internal damage, and this anatomical diagnosis has some metaphorical weight. Being wounded did not cause Gleb to doubt, but only hardened his resolve. The crisis time, threshold tension, and theatrical bodily display in this novel recall a scene out of Dostoevsky – minus, of course, the genius, richness of ideas, and unreliable or ironic narrator – but in the Dostoevskian novel, crucifixion and resurrection imagery must always serve the inside of the person, not the surface. The depthlessness in socialist realist characters cannot ultimately be explained by the techniques of the psychological novel. They require a different framework, perhaps one more akin to the simpler forms of epic.

Boris Gasparov has put forth the following hypothesis to explain the socialist realist innovation in character construction.13 The classic psychological novel is built on continuity. Events in it are internalized, remembered, brooded over, recovered in a crooked way, partially confronted or evaded. The illusion of