The Slave Soul of Russia: Moral Masochism and the Cult of Suffering

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

1. For example: Dallin and Nicolaevsky 1947, 88-107; Hellie 1982, 711; Kiva 1990.

2. The phrase is from a famous passage in The Diary of a Writer (1873). See Dostoevskii 1972-88, vol. 21, 36.

3. Vakar 1961, 40.

4. Voznesenskii 1991, 12.

5. Grossman 1973, 176–80. For a historical overview of the term “Russian soul” (“russkaia dusha”) see Williams 1970. Wierzbicka (1992, 31–63) offers insightful remarks on the semantics of the Russian term “dusha.”

6. Ivanov 1909, 327. Cf. Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 169.

7. Ivanov 1909, 330.

8. Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 157.

9. Belkin 1991b, 14.

10. Some others have already applied this term to Russians, e.g., Hingley 1977, 195. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declares that the idea of a “perennial Russian slave mentality” is a “persistent and tendentious generalization” concocted by people who do not really understand Russia (1977, 187). One of the purposes of this book is to prove Solzhenitsyn wrong.

By the English term “mentality” I do not mean to be translating French “mentalité”—as in the “histoire des mentalités” approach which has recently established itself in Russian studies (cf. Perrie 1989), and which, incidentally, I heartily endorse. In any case, English “mentality” suggests a more strictly psychological phenomenon, which is the concern of this book.

11. Gorskii 1977 (1969), 378.

12. As quoted in Golovanov 1992, 13.

13. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–95), in his semi-pornographic Venus in Furs, describes a man who obtains sexual gratification from being whipped, trampled upon, or otherwise humiliated by a woman. For a discussion of Sacher-Masoch’s writing, see Lenzer 1975. The term “masochism” was coined by the pioneering sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) in his Psychopathia Sexualis (1866; English edition 1929, 132). Freud moved away from the erotogenic orientation of the term with his notion of “moral masochism” (see chap. 5 of this volume). As if it were an unprintable swear word, the Russian term “mazokhizm” is missing from many Russian dictionaries, including the authoritative seventeen-volume Academy dictionary (ANSSSR 1950–65). It has recently emerged, however, in the post-Soviet Russian press. For example, Freud’s essay on masochism (“Ekonomicheskaia problema mazokhizma”) has recently appeared in Russian, appended to a translation of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs (Zakher-Mazokh 1992, 349–64).

14. As defined by Katz 1990, 226.

15. Freud, SE, vol. 19, 165–70.

16. See, for example, Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” in SE, vol. 18, 7–64. The death instinct is sometimes equated with a “primary masochism” by Freud (e.g., SE, vol. 18, 55). If such a species of masochism exists (and most psychoanalysts think not), it is in any case not the topic of this book. Incidentally, Freud’s notion of the death instinct supposedly has a “Russian” origin, namely, the idea of the “destruction instinct” advanced by the Russian psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein (see Rice 1982; Leibin 1990, 61).

As for Russian nonerotogenic sadism (“zhestokost’”), it too is a large and legitimate object of study, but it is not a topic that I can even begin to treat in this book.

17. For abundant examples, see Kohn 1960.

18. See Heller 1988 (1985). Heller would probably accept the idea that masochism became at least one of the traits of Homo sovieticus, although he does not use the psychoanalytic term. For example, speaking of the brutal collectivization of the peasantry in the early 1930s, Heller says: “The massacre of the peasantry allowed the state to turn the survivors into a submissive, inert mass of state citizens” (39). Or, paraphrasing a passage from Zamiatin’s novel We, Heller says individuals should “wish” to be “welded together into a collective” (6). At one point Heller agrees with Igor Shafarevich’s claim that socialism is “one of the aspects of the impulse of mankind’s yearning for self-destruction and nothingness” (as quoted by Heller, 9).

A current, derogatory term for Homo sovieticus is “Sovok,” acronym for “sovetskii chelovek,” but also homonym of “sovok” (dustpan). Russians who refer to themselves with this humiliating term are behaving masochistically.

19. Dicks 1952. See also Dicks 1960.

20. Dicks 1952, 153.

21. Ibid., 153–54.

22. The late Felix Dreizin says, for example: “Russian culture strongly encourages masochistic tendencies in individual psychology,” and he backs this up with some revealing quotations from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the supposed moral superiority of prison life. See Dreizin 1990, 182–85.

In his essay on Maksim Gor’kii, Erik Erikson speaks of “that pattern of masochistic identification with authority which apparently has been a strong collective force in the history of Russia” (1963, 371).

Without using the term “masochism,” Nathan Leites adduces examples illustrating his thesis that Russian Bolsheviks operate on the principle that “Life is sacrifice” (Leites 1953, 132–41).

In his interesting quasi-psychoanalytic study of Russian culture, Le tsarévitch immolé, Alain Besançon is willing to grant that there is at least an “analogie d’expérience” between Russian religious asceticism and what Freud meant by moral masochism (1967, 75).

Others who have made passing references to Russian masochism—or who have treated it without necessarily using the term—will be quoted in the course of this book.

23. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 4, 5.

24. ANSSSR 1950–65, vol. 12, 7.

25. Ibid.

26. As quoted by Berdiaev 1971 (1946), 151.

27. Gor’kii 1978 (1912), 306.

28. For historical and socioeconomic analyses of slavery in Russia, see Pipes 1974, 148 ff.; Kolchin 1987; Blum 1961; Hellie 1982; Hoch 1986. These and related works will occasionally yield interesting information about psychological matters, but their focus is elsewhere.

29. See, for example, Perrie 1989.

30. See especially Daniel Field’s book Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (1989 [1976]).

31. Kolchin 1987, 269. On some psychological aspects of serf rebelliousness, see Litvak 1971.

32. This is not to suggest that masochism was the only reason why serfs tended not to rebel. There were other (psychological, economic, political, etc.) reasons as well. For example, the economic interests of the serf owner and the patriarchal heads of serf households overlapped considerably, as Steven Hoch has shown (1986, chap. 3). Nonetheless, there has been little study in this area. Historians, for example, are more likely to be concerned with why peasants rebel than with why they do not.

33. Olearius 1967 (1656), 147.

34. Fletcher 1966 (1591), 46.

35. Hingley 1977, 194.

36. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 347.

37. Ibid., 167, 168, 169, 194.

38. Ibid., 108, 180, 182.

39. See, for example, the studies of inmates of the German concentration camps or slaves on southern American plantations by Bettelheim 1980, 3–83; Elkins 1963, 81–139; Stampp 1971. As Belkin (1991b, 23–24) points out, some of the children of parents who were arrested during the Stalin period live out their lives in fear.

40. Here I concur with Hellie’s (1987, 183–5) refutation of Keenan’s (1986) dismissal of the slavishness of persons surrounding the tsar in Muscovy.

41. For example, between the years 1959 and 1989 the proportion of ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation ranged from 81.5 to 83.3 percent (Arutiunian 1992, 21, table 3).

42. Examples provided by Cherniavsky 1961, 216–17.

43. Voloshin 1989, 11.

44. Likhachev 1988, 5.

45. Borisov 1976, 204. Cf. Borisov 1974 for the condensed Russian version of this article.

46. Berdyaev 1944, 164ff.; Berdiaev 1939, 137ff. Early in his career Berdiaev himself yielded to the temptation to personify Russia; see 229 herein.

47. Flugel 1950 (1921), 126.

48. For example: Flugel 1950 (1921), 125–28; Erikson 1969, 155, 157, 222; DeMause 1982, 175; Koenigsberg 1977; Anzieu 1984 (1975); Chasseguet-Smirgel 1985, 76–93; GAP 1987.

49. See, for example: Heller 1988, chap. 4; Cox 1989; Rzhevskii 1987.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

1. Lunt 1990.

2. Averintsev 1988, 332.

3. Toporov 1987, 234, 244.

4. Berdiaev 1971 (1946), 9.

5. As translated from the Primary Chronicle by Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 106 (italics added).

6. As quoted by Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 109.

7. Toporov 1987, 243.

8. Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 105.

9. See Cherniavsky 1961, chap. 1.

10. Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 104.

11. As quoted by Fedotov 1975, vol. 2, 57, 75, 77, 93, resp.

12. Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 117–19.

13. Ibid., 119.

14. As quoted by Fedotov 1975, vol. 2, 210.

15. Bolshakoff 1977, 53.

16. Ibid., 124.

17. Meehan-Waters 1991, 41.

18. Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 149–50.

19. Bolshakoff 1977, 47–48.

20. Ibid., 58, 101. For more detailed figures, see Smolitsch 1953, 538.

21. I am hardly the first to note the masochistic element in ascetic practices. Psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel, for example, considers that masochism is essential to “the psychology of asceticism” (1945, 364). Shirley Panken says that “the Christian ethic has sanctified masochism in such religious practices as mortification and its most extreme variant, asceticism” (Panken 1973, 12). Stuart L. Charme (1983, 224) points to numerous biblical examples where one’s suffering is interpreted as a sign of God’s love, e.g., “the Lord disciplines him whom He loves” (Hebrews 12:6). Sociologist Peter L. Berger, discussing the problem of theodicy, says that religious surrender of the self always has masochistic overtones. When Job declared “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” he was engaging in a “pure form of religious masochism vis a vis the Biblical God.” The Calvinist vision of “the damned themselves joining in the glorification of that same God who has sentenced them to damnation” is also a “pure form of the masochistic attitude” (Berger 1967, 75).

The New Testament is of course full of exhortations to “turn the other cheek” and “take up the cross.” Gary Liaboe and James Guy (1985) argue that these ideas should not be taken too seriously, lest Christians fall into a masochistic “distortion of servanthood.” But they do not notice that very little of the Christian idea of “servanthood” is left when the masochism is subtracted from it. It is hard to miss the masochism in Saint Paul’s boastful descriptions of his own sufferings, yet Dale Martin’s recent treatise (1990) on the metaphor of slavery in Pauline Christianity (as in “slave of Christ”) makes no mention of clinical issues or the psychoanalysis of masochism. In general, scholarly treatments of the central Judeo-Christian texts are bound to be incomplete without a consideration of masochism.

22. Billington 1968, 65, 204.

23. Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 341.

24. Pyle 1989.

25. Kireevskii 1984, 232.

26. Fletcher 1966 (1591), 90.

27. Kovalevskii 1895, 147.

28. Gor’kii 1937, 158.

29. Wortman 1967, 66.

30. There is a considerable (and contentious) literature on holy foolishness in Russia which includes: Kovalevskii 1895; Fedotov 1942; Fedotov 1975, vol. 2, 316–43; Thompson 1987; Likhachev 1987, vol. 2, 427–30; Likhachev and Panchenko 1976; Ziolkowski 1988, 131ff; Murav 1992.

31. Billington 1968, 60.

32. Saward 1980, 22. Cf. Kovalevskii 1895, 135–36.

33. Valuable sources on the Raskol and the Old Believers include: Zen’kovskii 1970; Cherniavsky 1966; Crummey 1970.

34. Avvakum 1979 (1673), 52.

35. Ibid., 61.

36. Cf. Likhachev in Likhachev and Panchenko 1976, 75–89.

37. Hunt 1985, 29.

38. Ibid., 30.

39. Kenneth Brostrom in his introduction to Avvakum 1979, 22. In his discussion of Avvakum’s “rock-ribbed passivity” (161) Brostrom comes close to recognizing that Avvakum was a masochist.

40. Sapozhnikov 1891, 123.

41. Ibid., end flap; cf. Crummey 1970, 39–57.

42. Crummey 1970, 51, 46. As Crummey points out, some Old Believers had the good sense to avoid suicidal confrontations with the authorities, and advocated avoidance of self-immolation.

43. Ziolkowski 1988, 197–217.

44. Some useful and heterogeneous sources from the enormous literature on Russian sectarianism include: Klibanov 1982 (1965); Leroy-Beaulieu 1902–5, vol. 3, 399–507; Billington 1968, 174–80; Munro 1980; Grass 1907–14; Mel’gunov 1919; Kutepov 1900; Steeves 1983. A chapter of Mel’gunov’s book (157–202) vigorously defends sectarians against such labels as “pathological” and “degenerate” attached to them by pre-psychoanalytic psychiatrists in Russia.

Yuri Glazov compares the all-male sadomasochistic collective of “thieves” (“vory”) in the Soviet gulag with the Khlysty. The “thieves” were hardened criminals who killed ordinary prisoners without compunction, and who took great pride in being able to inflict various mutilations upon themselves, such as swallowing broken glass or cutting off a finger or a hand (1985, 43–44).

45. Billington 1968, 179.

46. Averintsev 1988.

47. Toporov 1987, 246.

48. As quoted by Fedotov 1975, vol. 2, 210.

49. In Avvakum 1979, 189–91.

50. As quoted by Dunlop 1972, 137.

51. Szamuely 1974, 64; Toporov 1987, 219; Siniavskii 1991, 172–73.

52. Thanks to Yuri Druzhnikov for this proverb.

53. Dunlop 1972, 123.

54. Ibid., 41.

55. As translated by Gorodetzky 1973, 34. For the Russian original see Gogol’ 1937–52, vol. 8, 348. For a comprehensive study of Gogol’s “forgotten book,” see Sobel 1981.

56. As translated by Gorodetzky 1973, 34.

57. E.g., Fedotov 1942, 35; 1975, vol. 2, 210.

58. Gorodetzky 1973 (1938), ix. Cf. Ziolkowski 1988, 126ff.

59. Fedotov 1942, 35.

60. This according to Clark and Holquist 1984, 84–87, 128. I have made some remarks on Bakhtin’s masochistic epistemology (Rancour-Laferriere 1990, 524).

61. Berdiaev 1971 (1946), 30.

62. Radishchev 1958, 146; Russian original is Radishchev 1961 (1790), 89.

63. Radishchev 1958, 152; Radishchev 1961, 93.

64. Radishchev 1958, 214; 1961, 145.

65. Pushkin 1962–65, vol. 7, 291.

66. Marina Gromyko, in her fascinating compendium Mir russkoi derevni, quotes the same passage from Pushkin as evidence for the positive and worthy features of the Russian peasant (1991, 94). She also quotes extensively from various published and unpublished ethnographic sources to demonstrate the existence of such qualities as intelligence, generosity, industry, honesty, and dignity among the peasants. Evidence for the peasant’s less admirable qualities, however, is played down by Gromyko—as if diverse or even contradictory qualities could not coexist. This is a perhaps understandable reaction against the brutal treatment of peasants and peasant culture by Soviet authority, and against the negative characterizations of the peasantry which had been offered by Soviet scholars and pseudo-scholars in the past.

67. Chaadayev 1969, 58. For the French original, see Tchaadaev 1970, 75.

68. Chaadayev 1969, 36.

69. Ibid., 37.

70. Chaadaev 1989, 204. For the French original, only recently published in Russia, see Chaadaev 1991, vol. 1, 256. See also Kamenskii 1986.

71. Chaadaev 1991, vol. 1, 256.

72. Chaadayev 1969, 57.

73. Gertsen 1962 (1852–68), vol. 1, 449.

74. See also Chaadaev 1989, 210–211.

75. Chaadayev 1969, 178; Tchaadaev 1970, 211.

76. Chaadaev 1989, 203. For the French original, see Chaadaev 1991, vol. 1, 255.

77. As quoted by Pipes 1974, 266.

78. The ambivalence tended to get resolved in favor of submissiveness. For example, although Chaadaev spoke of the existence of free will, he saw it as illusory (Chaadayev 1969, 89). He repeatedly insisted on the need for submission to some higher intellect or some moral imperative in life. For example: “The mind is powerful only because it is submissive” (70; see also pp. 69, 71, 73, 75).

Boris Tarasov, writing in a recent issue of Literaturnaia gazeta, detects (but does not psychoanalyze) the ambivalence of Chaadaev’s feelings on a variety of topics, e.g., on whether or not Christianity is good for Russia. See Tarasov 1990; see also Lednicki (1954, 29) on the “inconsistent mind” of Chaadaev, and Z. A. Kamenskii’s introduction to the 1991 edition (vol. 1, 9–85) on the “paradoxes of Chaadaev.”

Philip Pomper detects Chaadaev’s own masochistic strain when he refers to the “luxuriant self-castigation” in a passage from The Philosophical Letters (Pomper 1970, 36). In this case, too, psychoanalysis is not actually applied, but is implicit.

Julia Brun-Zejmis, in a very interesting recent article about national inferiority feelings in Russia, recognizes Chaadaev’s masochistic side: “Chaadaev’s pessimistic pronouncements about Russia answered a need for self-condemnation” (1991, 649).

79. Mickiewicz 1974, 306. Thanks to David Brodsky for the English translation.

80. Letter of 13 February 1991.

81. Lednicki 1954, 51.

82. See Kennan 1971 and Erofeev’s 1990 review of Custine 1989. For the original French I rely here on Custine 1843, in four volumes.

Custine’s travelogue is not without its problems. The author did not visit all of the major cities in Russia, nor did he communicate with Russians of all social classes. He was able to converse only with those Russians who knew French or some other Western language, which is to say that his in-depth contacts were limited primarily to members of the Russian nobility or government officials of various kinds. Custine does tend to ramble (he admits to “the wandering character of my thoughts,” 282). The book is also repetitious, especially concerning those Russian practices that Custine does not like, such as the tendency of the Russian nobility to ape the French. As Kennan has observed (1971, 75), Custine holds contradictory views toward Tsar Nicholas, and these are symptoms of a “most painful, almost tortured, ambivalence.” Custine does tend to exaggerate what is bad about Russia (ibid., 120). Sometimes Custine is wrong in matters of fact, as when he applies his observations about Russians to “Slavonians” generally (e.g., “All the Slavonian peasants [tous les paysans slaves] are thieves” [496], a sweeping statement that is not necessarily true even if limited to Russians). Custine can also be quite mistaken in interpretative matters, as when he dismisses the importance of Pushkin’s poetry (289) or harshly judges the art inside of Russian Orthodox churches (e.g., 424).

But most critics agree that Custine’s book is remarkably insightful. Alexander Herzen declared that it was “unquestionably the most diverting and intelligent book written about Russia by a foreigner,” and Viktor Erofeev writes that “Herzen’s words are still true today, despite the thousands of books written about Russia since that time” (Erofeev 1990, 23). Custine spoke with “true bearded Russians,” even if in French. As he quite correctly observes at the end of his book, “I have not fully seen, but I have fully devined” (617).

In Yuri Druzhnikov’s recent novel Angels on the Head of a Fin (1989), a condensed samizdat version of Custine’s work turns up on the desk of a Soviet newspaper editor. The antics which follow demonstrate that Custine’s ideas are every bit as relevant to Brezhnev-era Russia as to the Russia of Nicholas I. As the author of the novel points out, a complete and uncensored Russian translation of Custine’s work has yet to be published.

83. Custine 1989, 595; 1843, vol. 4, 313.

84. Custine 1989, 619.

85. Olearius 1967 (1656), 147.

86. Chaadaev 1989, 202. Kennan is inclined to believe that Custine was influenced by Chaadaev’s First Philosophical Letter (1971, 39–40). For a more detailed comparison of Chaadaev and Custine, see Lednicki 1954, 56ff.

87. Masaryk 1955–67, vol. 1, 135.

88. Custine 1989, 21.

89. Ibid., 234.

90. Ibid., 16.

91. Ibid., 205.

92. Ibid., 171.

93. Lermontov 1961–62, vol. 1, 524. The poem was apparently written in April of 1841 on the occasion of Lermontov’s last exile from Russia to the Caucasus (Viskovatyi 1891, 379).

94. As translated by Liberman 1983, 556.

95. For a psychoanalytic study of this poem, see Rancour-Laferriere 1993b. It is worth noting that Lermontov’s poem is still offensive to many in Russia. For example, when filmmakers El’dar Riazanov and Grigorii Gorin attempted to include the poem in a film they were making about Lermontov in 1980, officials from Gosteleradio forced them to delete it (see Tucker 1991, 39).

96. For more on the multifarious connections between these writers (excluding Radishchev), see Lednicki 1954, 21–104. I wish to thank David Brodsky for bringing Lednicki’s book to my attention.

97. Kolakowski 1992, 5.

98. Custine 1989, 195, italics added; 1843, vol. 2, 46.

99. Custine 1989, 361. Cf. 274.

100. Ibid., 362.

101. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 1, 186. For the Russian original: Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 22, 29.

102. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 1, 186; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 22, 29.

103. Custine 1989, 362, italics added.

104. Khomiakov 1955, 115.

105. Leatherbarrow and Offord 1987, 99. For the Russian original, see Brodskii 1910, 78.

106. Leatherbarrow and Offord 1987, 98; Brodskii 1910, 74.

107. Leatherbarrow and Offord 1987, 104; original in Brodskii 1910, 88. Cf. Ivan Kireevsky (Kireevskii 1984, 209), who says that the Tatars, Poles, Hungarians, Germans, and other scourges sent upon the Russians by Providence were not able to change the essential “inner and social life” of the Russians—as if the “inner” and the “social” were the same thing.

108. Billington 1968, 19.

109. Walicki 1989, 192.

110. Leatherbarrow and Offord 1987, 65. On the problem of translating sobornosf, see Christoff 1961, 139ff.

111. Arsen’ev 1959, 66–109.

112. Solzhenitsyn 1991 (1990), 101.

113. Leatherbarrow and Offord 1987, 94. For the Russian original, see Khomiakov 1955, 182. See Riasanovsky 1955 for a detailed study of sobornost’ in Khomiakov’s works.

114. For a useful review of the contentious literature on the genesis and development of the commune in Russia, see Shanin 1985, 78–81. For more on the psychology of communal life, see 215–24 herein.

115. Kireevskii 1984, 226.

116. Walicki 1989, 256.

117. Aksakov, 1861–80, vol. 1, 291–92, as translated in Walicki 1989, 256–57.

118. See Ivanov 1971–79, vol. 2, 219.

119. Aksakov 1861–80, vol. 1, 629 (mistakenly paginated as 229).

120. Young 1979, 139; cf. 154–56.

121. Solov’ev 1966–69, vol. 3, 113; Billington 1968, 468. See Mochul’skii 1951, 179, for further examples of Solov’ev’s contradictory ideas on freedom.

122. Solzhenitsyn 1976, 136.

123. See, for example, Ivanov 1969, 131.

124. Cf. Walicki 1989, 197–99.

125. Stein suggests that the idealized collective was, for Khomiakov, maternal in nature (1976, 428). This is consonant with the general psychoanalytic findings on the attitude of the individual to the collective in Russia and elsewhere (see chap. 9).

126. Kireevskii 1984, 122.

127. Translated in Leatherbarrow and Offord 1987, 147 from Gertsen 1954–65, vol. 7, 333.

128. Gertsen 1954–65, vol. 7, 113/243.

129. Ibid., 322–23.

130. See especially Venturi 1960.

131. For example: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!” See Solzhenitsyn 1975a, 610, 611, 617; 1974, 598, 599.

132. Ulam 1976, 29. Pomper (1970, 102) refers to Chernyshevsky’s “almost pathological self-subordination to his wife.”

133. Blanchard 1984, 58.

134. Ibid., 58.

135. See Pipes 1989, 103–121.

136. Billington 1968, 394.

137. Fedotov 1942, 29.

138. Szamuely 1974, 152.

139. As quoted by Gorodetzky 1973, 89.

140. Gorodetzky 1973, 90 is quoting socialist thinker Petr L. Lavrov.

141. Fedotov 1942, 33.

142. Wortman 1967, 7.

143. Ibid., 8.

144. Ibid., 54.

145. Terrorists could be masochistic as well as sadistic, for their aggressive acts were often impractical and self-defeating. Thus Dmitrii Karakazov, who made an attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander in 1866, is characterized by Pomper (1970, 91) as “a miserable and suicidal person, one of those who place their self-destructive impulse in the service of some larger cause.”

146. Vekhi 1909, 20; Fedotov 1954 (1938), 4; Hubbs 1988, 230.

147. Szamuely 1974, 160, 161; cf. Masaryk 1955–67, vol. 2, 108.

148. Dunham 1960, 482; cf. 476 on self-laceration.

149. Berlin 1979, 125.

150. Ibid., 168; cf. Chances 1978 (16) on Belinsky’s praise of humility (smirenie) and self-renunciation (samootrechenie) during this period.

151. Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 173.

152. Ibid., 61.

153. Ibid., 147. Nikitenko himself speaks of the “servile spirit” of Russians (“nashemu kholopskomu dukhu”—ibid., 154).

154. Ibid., 146.

155. Ibid., 178.

156. Ibid., 66.

157. See discussion on 93–94, on the essentials of “moral masochism.”

158. The story is in the collection Black on White (Gippius 1908), 95–105.

159. As quoted by Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 60.

160. Ibid., 174, italics added.

161. E.g., Toporov 1987, 220; Ivanov 1909, 331.

162. Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 175–76.

163. Ibid., 178.

164. Rozanov 1990b, 414.

165. Ibid., 100–102.

166. Rozanov 1990a, 253.

167. Rozanov 1990b, 351. Gor’kii was quite right to speak of Rozanov’s slavishness before God (“rabstvo pered bogom Vashe”—1978 [1912], 306).

168. E.g., Berdiaev 1990, 38–39.

169. Cf. Crone 1978, 28–30.

170. Rozanov 1990b, 106.

171. Fedorov 1906–13; 1928–29. For a clear treatment of Fedorov’s life and work, see Young 1979. For new information on Fedorov’s biography, see Semenova 1990 (who unfortunately disregards most Western research on Fedorov).

172. Fedorov 1928–29, part I, 5.

173. E.g., Fedorov 1906–13, vol. 2, 205.

174. Fedorov 1928–29, part I, 34. See also Wiles (1965, 133–34) on Fedorov’s devaluation of mothers.

175. As quoted by Young 1979, 67.

176. Ibid., 75.

177. Ivanov 1909, 361.

178. Berdyaev 1944 (1939), 48.

179. Ibid., 27.

180. Ibid., 138.

181. Berdiaev 1971 (1946), 81.

182. Ibid., 13.

183. Ibid., 145, 255.

184. Berdiaev 1991, 15.

185. Berdiaev 1990, 13.

186. Berdiaev 1991, 14.

187. Ibid., 59. Many have noticed the prevalence and importance of words with the root -rod- in the Russian language (e.g., Likhachev 1987, vol. 2, 421–22), although no one has considered this word-nest from a psychoanalytic angle. As will be seen repeatedly in this book (particularly in connection with the discussion of Dostoevsky’s maternal collective, below, 241–42), Russians like to exploit the maternal suggestiveness of -rod- words.

188. Berdiaev 1991, 56. This statement is repeated on the next page as well.

189. Berdiaev 1990, 12.

190. Russian original and English translation in Markov and Sparks 1967, 510–11.

191. Grossman 1973, 176 (cf. 90 herein). Actually, the metaphor of Russia as bride and Russia’s leader as groom is quite ancient (although it is not nearly as commonplace as the related imagery of Russia as mother and its leader as father). See, for example: Uspenskii 1988, 117–18; Hubbs 1988, 187–90.

192. Lenin 1958–65, vol. 26, 107. I wish to thank my colleague Yuri Druzhnikov for bringing Lenin’s article to my attention.

193. Lenin 1958–65, vol. 26, 107.

194. Ibid., 108.

195. Ibid.

196. Custine 1989, 608, italics added.

197. Kennan 1971, 124; cf. Tucker 1991, 38.

198. Ibid., 131, italics added.

199. See Brun-Zejmis 1991. This author’s idea that Russian messianism is a compensation for feelings of national inferiority is psychoanalytic in essence (one is reminded of the work of Adler and Kohut in particular).

200. Altaev 1977 (1969), 131, italics added.

201. Evtushenko 1988, 13.

202. Excerpts of Evtushenko (1988) were translated for Time magazine by Antonina Bouis (Yevtushenko 1988).

203. Yevtushenko 1988, 31.

204. Custine 1989, 474–75; 1843, vol. 4, 49.

205. Yevtushenko 1988, 31.

206. As quoted from the Western digest version of Nezavisimaia gazeta, vol. 1, issue 20–21, July 1992, p. 1.

207. Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 41, 7 October 1992, p. 1. In the poem Voznesenskii compares Russia to the famous poet Marina Tsvetaeva, who committed suicide.

208. Grafova 1991, 6.

209. Solzhenitsyn 1991, 4–5; for the original, see Solzhenitsyn 1990, 3.

210. Moskovskie novosti, no. 42, 18 October 1992, p. 23.

211. Tsipko 1991, 7.

212. Golovanov 1992, 13.

213. Zaslavskaya 1984, 106.

214. As quoted by Mikhail Heller 1988, 134 (= Geller 1985, 151). For a documentary study of alcoholism in the Soviet Union, see Boris Segal’s fascinating book The Drunken Society (1990).

215. Belkin 1991a, 4.

216. E.g., Tkachenko and Iakubova 1992.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

1. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 2, 191–92.

2. Wierzbicka 1992, 189.

3. Vekhi 1909, 48ff.

4. Berdiaev 1991, 64.

5. Berdiaev 1990, 76. If in some of his writings Berdiaev manifests a positive attitude toward smirenie, as Wierzbicka has shown (1992, 189–90), this means that he is ambivalent about the subject. In any case I cannot agree with Wierzbicka’s idea that smirenie is a consistently positive and exclusively religious notion.

6. Freud 1989 (1928), 41.

7. Khomiakov 1955, 83.

8. Ibid., 397.

9. Ibid., 83.

10. Berdiaev 1968 (1921), 164.

11. As quoted by Wierzbicka 1992, 188.

12. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 2, 194.

13. Custine 1989, 501, italics added.

14. Custine 1843, vol. 4, 103.

15. Fenichel 1945, 364.

16. Sarnoff 1988, 209.

17. Pipes 1974, 161.

18. Kavelin 1882, 151.

19. Wierzbicka 1992, 67.

20. As quoted by Wierzbicka 1992, 72.

21. See Andreev’s motif-index of folktales (1929, 67), which includes about a dozen items on sud’ba and the related “dolia” (roughly, “one’s lot in life”).

22. Example furnished by Yuri Druzhnikov. Recently in the Russian press the word sud’ba has been frequently appearing in the plural form (e.g., “sud’by naroda,” “sud’by otechestva”). Mikhail Epshtein has written about this phenomenon (1989, 312ff.). This is no doubt yet another reflection of the increasing “pluralism” of Russian society.

23. Cherniavsky 1961, 132. I have modified his translation somewhat.

24. Wierzbicka 1992, 70.

25. Mel’chuk and Zholkovskii 1984, 857–66.

26. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 4, 356.

27. Wierzbicka 1992, 108; cf. esp. the section on “not being in control,” 413–30.

28. As quoted by Wierzbicka 1992, 113.

29. Hubbs 1990, 59.

30. For examples, see Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 39–40. See also Fedotov 1975, 1, 349–50.

31. Cf. Martynova 1978, 182.

32. Martynova 1978, 178.

33. Anikin 1991, 68.

34. See Farnsworth 1992, 149. Eremina (1992) attempts to show that the death-wish lullabies were really an attempt to “deceive death,” to ward off the child’s possible death by concocting an apotropaic “contact with death.”

35. Dal’ 1984, vol. 1, 298.

36. Dunn 1974, 384.

37. Ransel 1988, 266ff.; Ransel 1991. Cf. Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 57; Dunn 1974, 388ff.; Hoch 1986, 68–69.

38. Ransel 1991, 120.

39. Baiburin 1993, 52.

40. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 221.

41. Ibid., 45.

42. See, for example, Selivanov 1991, 73.

43. Ibid.

44. Reik 1963, 163.

45. Infanticide did sometimes occur among the peasantry. An illegitimate infant might be drowned, suffocated, or poisoned, for example (e.g., Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 57–58).

46. Mel’chuk and Zholkovskii 1984, 860.

47. Gertsen 1954–65, vol. 7, 185.

48. Nekrasov 1967, vol. 2, 274.

49. Durova 1988 (1836), 34.

50. Boiko 1988, 197.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4

1. Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 16, 166–67. Compare Maksim Gor’kii’s assertion that Russian writers (including the greats, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) offer an “apology for passivity” and support violence “by preaching patience, reconciliation, forgiveness, justification” (Gor’kii 1937 [1905], 8, 9).

2. Gorodetzky 1973, 27–74. Cf. Fedotov 1942, which bears some curious resemblances to Gorodetzky, although Fedotov writes more clearly.

3. Ziolkowski 1988.

4. As translated by Gorodetzky 1973, 42. For the Russian original, see Turgenev 1960–68, vol. 10, 175.

5. Translated by Gorodetzky 1973, 39. Cf. Turgenev 1960–68, vol. 4, 358.

6. See Rancour-Laferriere 1993a; 1993d. On Tolstoy’s own masochism, see Blanchard 1984, 31–43.

7. Rosen 1993, 430.

8. Wasiolek 1964, 54.

9. There is an enormous psychoanalytic literature on Dostoevsky which gives due attention to the roles of guilt, abjection, suffering, humiliation, punishment, and related psychological issues in the life and works of this great author. See, for example: Freud 1989 (1928); Rancour-Laferriere 1989b, 6–10; Geha 1970; Bonaparte 1962; Kristeva 1982, 18–20; Paris 1973; Dalton 1979, 68ff.; Breger 1989, 25ff., 102, 196; Rosen 1993. Gorodetzky (1973, 59–69) treats Dostoevsky in terms of the humiliated Christ, and numerous other non-psychoanalytic critics have also paid ample attention to Dostoevsky’s cult of suffering.

10. Dostoyevsky 1980, 415, 433.

11. Ibid., 438.

12. Saltykov-Shchedrin 1980, 36. The Russian original is Saltykov-Shchedrin 1965–77, vol. 8, 292.

13. Saltykov-Shchedrin 1980, 10. The Russian original is Saltykov-Shchedrin 1965–77, vol. 8, 270.

14. Saltykov-Shchedrin 1980, 98, 152; 1965–77, vol. 8, 350, 401.

15. Seifrid 1992.

16. Smirnov 1987; 1990.

17. Clark 1985, 178.

18. Solzhenitsyn 1989, 361–62; 1978-, vol. 11, 426–27.

19. Pipes 1991, 213.

20. Dostoyevsky 1950, 618, italics added; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 14, 458. Cf. Wierzbicka 1992, 71.

21. Dostoyevsky 1950, 615–16; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 14, 456–57.

22. Dostoyevsky 1950, 617, italics added; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 14, 458.

23. Dostoyevsky 1950, 617–18, italics added. I have had to make some corrections in the Garnett translation. Cf. Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 14, 458.

24. See Chaitin 1972, 8Off.; Besançon 1968, 348. I agree with Chaitin’s suggestion that Dmitrii’s desire for imprisonment is the result of Oedipal guilt. Having wished to kill his father, and having gained possession of the maternal Grushenka, his father’s mistress, Dmitrii deserves the Oedipal talion punishment.

But this Oedipal reading does not exclude a pre-Oedipal one, for the desire for punishment can be overdetermined (see chap. 5 herein).

25. See Rozanov 1903, vol. 2, 98.

26. Pushkin 1962–66, vol. 5, 70–71.

27. Nabokov 1981, vol. 1, 166.

28. Dostoevskii 1972–1988, vol. 26, 140. Cf. Hubbs 1988, 216.

29. Nabokov 1981, vol. 1, 228.

30. Ibid., 185; Pushkin 1962–66, vol. 5, 86.

31. Cf. Hubbs 1988, 216.

32. Nabokov 1981, vol. 1, 205; Pushkin 1962–66, vol. 5, 100.

33. See Rancour-Laferriere 1989a.

34. See, for example Freud, SE, vol. 9, 220; Fenichel 1945, 214.

35. For a psychoanalytic interpretation of Tat’iana’s dream, see Rancour-Laferriere 1989a.

36. It is in any case normal, cross-culturally, for the object of love in adulthood to be a parental figure from the past. Biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists of various stripes (including of course psychoanalysts) have studied this phenomenon. See Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 108ff., 196ff.

37. Nabokov 1981, vol. I, 161; Pushkin 1962–66, vol. 5, 66.

38. Nabokov 1981, vol. 1, 304–5; Pushkin 1962–66, vol. 5, 187.

39. Pushkin 1962–66, 187–88.

40. Nabokov 1981, 305.

41. Pushkin 1962–66, 188.

42. Nabokov 1981, 306.

43. Grossman 1973, 173.

44. Grossman 1973, 174, 175. The freedom/slavery opposition also plays an important role in Life and Fate. See Garrard 1991b. For Chaadaev’s influence on Grossman, see Brun-Zejmis 1991, 649–50.

45. Grossman 1973, 30.

46. Ibid., 176–77.

47. Ibid., 180.

48. Ibid., 181.

49. See Svirskii 1979, 300.

50. On this controversy, see the attack by Antonov, Klykov, and Shafarevich (1989) on Anatolii Anan’ev, who had published Forever Flowing in his journal Oktiabr’ (he was later fired, then reinstated). See also: Bocharov and Lobanov 1989; Anan’ev 1990; Garrard 1991a.

51. Anan’ev 1990, 14.

52. Grossman 1973, 175, 178, 183. Cf. also 70–71.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5

1. Freud, SE, vol. 19, 165.

2. Horney 1964 (1937), 228, italics added.

3. Freud, SE, vol. 22, 106–7.

4. Freud, SE, vol. 19, 168. Cf. Dicks 1952, 139.

5. Loewenstein 1957, 230.

6. Freud 1989 (1928), 47.

7. Freud, SE, vol. 19, 169.

8. See, for example: Bergler 1949; Winnicott 1960; Kohut 1971; Dinnerstein 1976; Chodorow 1978; Mahler et al. 1975; Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 196ff.; Brunswick 1940; Fisher and Greenberg 1977, 187ft; Klein 1977 (1921–45); Greenberg and Mitchell 1983; Asch 1988; Meyers 1988; Stern 1977; Koenigsberg 1989; Horner 1992.

9. Bergler 1949, 5. The idea that the painful experience is a compulsive repetition of some previous experience goes back of course to Freud’s idea of the “repetition compulsion” (“Wiederholungszwang”) as a means of mastering previous trauma. See 98 herein.

10. Cf. Socarides 1958, 588.

11. Novick and Novick 1987, 360.

12. Dinnerstein 1976, 166. Cf. Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 120; 260ff.

13. See Reik 1941, 427–33.

14. Cooper 1988, 120.

15. Katz 1990, 235.

16. Stern 1977, 122–23.

17. See, for example: Freud, SE, vol. 14, 127–29; Fenichel 1945, 360ff. In his later work Freud came to view masochism as a manifestation of the so-called “death instinct” (e.g., SE, vol. 19, 164, 170). Psychoanalysts have not received this idea with enthusiasm.

18. Bieber 1966, 268. Compare a scene described by McDevitt (1983, 281): “During his eighth month, when his father’s arm interfered with his water play, Peter tried to push it aside and then bit it. Later, when his mother said, “No,” when he started to bite her, he bit himself instead.”

19. Bieber 1966, 267.

20. Fenichel 1945, 542.

21. Freud, SE, vol. 18, 3–64.

22. As phrased by Cooper 1988, 122. See also Bergler 1949.

23. Reik (1941, 156ff.) is very good on the assertiveness and defiance inherent in masochistic behavior.

24. Cooper 1988, 123.

25. Bergler 1949, 6, italics added.

26. Kernberg 1988, 68.

27. Ibid., 69.

28. Bergler 1949, 203ff.

29. Kernberg 1988, 63; cf. Asch 1988, 110.

30. Berliner 1958, 46.

31. Fenichel 1945, 363.

32. Socarides 1958, 589.

33. Berliner 1958, 44.

34. Menaker 1979, 66.

35. Freud, SE, vol. 14, 248.

36. Dostoyevsky 1950, 692; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 15, 10.

37. Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 294.

38. Hunt 1974, 333.

39. Kinsey et al. 1965 (1953), 677; Hunt 1974, 333.

40. For some of the abundant cross-cultural evidence that men typically have higher social status and power than women, see Rancour-Laferriere 1985, chap. 40.

41. See Baumeister 1989, 147ff.

42. Chancer 1992, 29.

43. Freud, SE, vol. 19, 161–62.

44. Compare, for example, Deutsch 1930 with Blum 1977. See also Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 280–82.

45. See, for example, Caplan 1985, who suggests that not only is there no female masochism, there is no such thing as masochism, period.

46. Kass 1987.

47. Rosewater 1987, 191.

48. Ibid., 192.

49. See, for example, the review of the research in this area by Brody 1985.

50. Rosewater 1987, 191.

51. Ibid., 194.

52. See, for example, Walker 1987, 186; Walker and Browne 1985, 186.

53. Walker and Browne 1985, 187.

54. Walker 1987, 186.

55. Rancour-Laferriere 1988a.

56. Asch 1988, 107. For a discussion of the many problems involved in treating masochistic patients, see Panken 1973, 143–95.

57. Asch 1988, 108.

58. Meyers 1988, 180.

59. Ibid., 1988, 183–84.

60. Ibid., 184.

61. See, for example: Cooper 1988, 127; Caplan 1985, 88. See also Baumeister’s formulation: “I hurt, therefore I am” (1989, 75).

62. Stolorow 1975, 442. Cf. Warren 1985 (104), who argues that masochists “actively seek pain because feeling pain has become an essential part of their identity (e.g., they see themselves as victims).”

63. Stolorow 1975, 443.

64. Baumeister 1989, 201.

65. Baumeister attempts to reconcile his theory with Stolorow’s in a somewhat different way (1989, 195–99).

66. Horney 1964 (1937), 230. Horney credits this idea to another analyst, Erich Fromm.

67. Fromm 1965 (1941).

68. Lane, Hull, and Foehrenbach 1991, 399, italics added.

69. Ibid., 397, italics added.

70. Warren 1985, 116.

71. As quoted by Walicki 1989, 248.

72. Leatherbarrow and Offord 1987, 105.

73. Shafarevich 1989, 173.

74. Kohut l971.

75. Stolorow 1975, 444. Cf.: Berliner 1958; Menaker 1979; Loewenstein 1957.

76. Cf. Berger 1967, 74.

77. Avvakum 1979 (1673), 112.

78. Nydes 1963, 248.

79. Brenner 1959, 224.

80. See, for example, LaPlanche and Pontalis 1973, 414–15.

81. As quoted by Bolshakoff 1977, 192, italics added.

82. See Rancour-Laferriere 1988b.

83. But see Horney 1967, 214–33; Bergler 1949, 108; Cooper 1988, 125.

84. Condee and Padunov 1987, 316.

85. Toporov 1987, 220.

86. Gromyko 1991, 126–29.

87. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 162–63; cf. Illiustrov 1904, 317ff.

88. Cf. the discussion of Russian “universal guilt” in Mead 1951, 27–29, 91–93.

89. Tolstoi 1928–64, vol. 23, 469–70, as modified from the translation by Gustafson 1986, 20.

90. See Laplanche and Pontalis 1973, 411. Tolstoy himself says that he is not certain whether this incident (and some others in this particular memoir) really took place or he dreamed it (469). He also states that he doesn’t know whether the incident took place while he was still nursing and less than a year old, or later when he had an outbreak of sores and was swaddled to prevent scratching (470).

91. See especially Gorer and Rickman 1962; Benedict 1949; Mead 1954; Whiting 1981; Kluckhohn 1962, 237ff.; Erikson 1963 (1950), 388–92; Dunn 1974, 386–87; Lipton et al. 1965; Chisholm 1983; Dundes 1984, 93ff. For a rare Soviet contribution on the swaddling hypothesis, see Kon 1968, 222.

92. Dunn 1974, 387.

93. Gorer in Gorer and Rickman 1962, 123, 128.

94. See especially Lipton et al. 1965.

95. Kluckhohn 1962, 237–40.

96. Bronfenbrenner 1972, 9–10.

97. Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 29.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6

1. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 341.

2. Shafarevich 1989, 190.

3. Moskovskie novosti, no. 43, 27 October 1991, p. 2.

4. Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 33, 21 August 1991, p. 1.

5. Gel’man 1992, 24.

6. See especially Likhachev and Panchenko 1976, and the discussion of Fools in Christ herein, 21–22.

7. As in Nikolai Zlatovratskii’s narodnik novel Foundations (1951 [1878–83], 24).

8. Items 1204, 1240, 1244, 1681, 1685, 1716 in Barag et al. 1979.

9. Dal’ 1984, vol. 1, 343; Smirnov-Kutachevskii 1905, 22.

10. Dal’ 1984, vol. 1, 342.

11. Ibid., 339, 343.

12. Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 173.

13. See, for example: Leroy-Beaulieu 1902–5, vol. 2, 278ff., 384ff.; Eklof 1991; Worobec 1991, 211–13; Kolchin 1987, 71–77, 120–26, 304; Belliustin 1985 (1858), 73; Hoch 1986, 160–86; Evreinov 1979 (1913?). For a plethora of proverbs on corporal punishment, see Illiustrov 1904, 327ff. There is an exceptionally large entry in Dahl’s dictionary under the verb “bit”’ (“to beat,” vol. 1, 88–90). See also the discussion of birch rods herein, 184. There are indications that corporal punishment of children is still common in Russia (Gamaiunov 1992).

Flogging was very common during the period of serfdom. For example, Hoch calculates that for the period 1826–28 in the village of Petrovskoe in Tambov province, there was a mean of 0.27 floggings per adult worker per year; based on thirteen years of complete data for the mid-nineteenth century in Petrovskoe, “roughly one-quarter of all adult male serfs were disciplined at least once during the course of a year” (Hoch 1986, 162–63).

14. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 347, 348.

15. Example provided by Yuri Druzhnikov. Cf. English: “It takes one to know one” (thanks to Catherine Chvany for this example).

16. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 348.

17. Okudzhava 1982, 95.

18. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 346; Carey 1972, 47.

19. For a good overall description (as opposed to a scholarly analysis) of the figure of Ivan the Fool, see Siniavskii 1991, 34ff.

20. Siniavskii 1991, 34.

21. Meletinskii 1958, 227.

22. Smirnov-Kutachevskii 1905.

23. A positive outcome is naturally gratifying to the listener. The nature of this gratification has been ably psychoanalyzed by Bruno Bettelheim in his essay on “The Youngest Child as Simpleton” (1977, 102–11).

24. To phrase this more in terms of Freud’s key essay on “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious” (SE, vol. 8), we may say: psychical energy or cathexis previously required to repress both sadistic impulses (against objects in the outside world) and masochistic fantasies (especially self-humiliation) is freed up by the figure of the fool, finding momentary outlet in the physiological outburst known as laughter. The behavior of Ivan the fool thus sets off psychological processes which resemble those occurring in what Freud called the “tendentious joke.”

25. Cf. Smirnov-Kutachevskii 1905, 15.

26. Not all Ivans are fools, of course. There are other, different kinds of Ivans in Russian folklore: Ivan the tsar’s son, Ivan the Bear’s ear, Ivan the son of a bitch, Ivan the Terrible, Ivan the son of a mare, Ivan the cow’s son, etc. Another way to put this is to say that masochism is only one aspect of Russian national character.

An interesting variation on foolish Ivan’s name is the name Ibanov, invented by the anti-Soviet satirist Aleksandr Zinoviev, author of The Yawning Heights (Zinov’ev 1976). All characters in this novel are named Ibanov. They are a bunch of sad sack intellectuals living in the allegorical land of Ibansk (from “ebat’” [“fuck”] and “Ivan”), admirably translated by Edward J. Brown (1982, 381) as “Fuckupia.” All the masochists of Ibansk are, as it were, fucked up. The numerous obscenities in the novel justify this characterization.

27. Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914.

28. Gor’kii 1937, 154–63.

29. Smirnov-Kutachevskii 1905, 44.

30. Likhachev 1987, vol. 2, 425–30.

31. Meletinskij 1975, 242; cf. also Smirnov-Kutachevskii 1905.

32. Likhachev 1987, vol. 2, 428–29.

33. Smirnov-Kutachevskii 1905, 57.

34. Hubbs 1988, 147.

35. See Barag et al. 1979, item 1677.

36. Shergin 1990.

37. Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 200ff.

38. Cf. Rank 1973 (1929), 112. I wish to thank my student Ellen Crecelius for bringing this reference to my attention.

39. Meletinskii 1958, 223.

40. “Pech’ nam mat’ rodnaia.” See Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 3, 108. Sometimes the term “pechka-matushka” is used (Eremina 1991, 158; cf. Hubbs 1988, 58). Freud listed the stove and oven as dream-symbols for the uterus (SE, vol. 15, 156, 162). Without mentioning Freud, Toporkov has recently demonstrated the uterine significance of the stove into which a sick child was supposed to be inserted for “re-baking” (“perepekanie”) in some East Slavic areas (1992, 115). See also Baiburin 1993 (53–54) on this topic.

41. There is an anal sub-motif within the category of Russian foolishness. We have, for example, the classic Russian self-deprecation: “The Russian is strong on hindsight,” or more literally, “is strong by means of the rear brain” (“Russkii chelovek zadnim umom krepok”). A Russian who is behaving foolishly may be characterized as “thinking with the ass” (“dumat’ zhopoi”). The medieval Russian “world of laughter” (Likhachev) also sometimes featured a rear end covered with ash or feces.

42. See Hubbs 1988, 146–47 on the fool’s dependency on his mother; Meletinskij 1975, 238–39 (= Meletinskii 1958, 224ff.) on his overall passivity.

43. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 345, 340. The root morpheme -rod- is remarkably common among the proverbs about fools.

44. Smirnov-Kutachevskii 1905, 22.

45. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 341.

46. Ibid., 339.

47. Ibid., 340.

48. The closest thing to an exception is the subgenre of obscene tales narrated by men, the so-called “zavetnye skazki.” Here hostility toward women is frequently expressed by the representation of women as “stupid” regarding sexual matters. For example: a young woman thinks that it is a piglet that a man is putting under her dress (when in fact it is his penis); a girl believes that penises are detachable; a son shows his father that he can get a return on his investment by making a “horny noblewoman” pay for sex with him; etc. (see Afanas’ev 1975 [1872]). It should be noted that the misogynistic sentiments of these tales are often coupled with intense castration anxiety.

49. Cf. Meletinskii 1958, 239.

50. Afanas’ev 1984–85, vol. 3, 117. See also the Andreev (1929) motif-index, no. 1685, and Barag et al. 1979 (same no.).

51. Afanas’ev 1984–85, vol. 3, 116, 117. Cf. Meletinskij 1975, 247. There are numerous psychological variants on this theme where the hero gains riches not directly by means of his mother’s dead body, but by destroying objects (a birch tree, a stump, etc.) which turn out to have money inside them, or underneath them. These objects would appear to be substitutes for the maternal body.

52. Zelenin 1991 (1914), 60.

53. Only very rarely does the fool’s closeness to the mother have any sexual overtones, e.g.: “Such a fool is the ram: before the feast of Saint Peter he sucks his mother, then after the feast of Saint Peter he fucks her” (“Durak-to baran: do Petrova-dnia matku soset, a posle Petrova-dnia matku ebet”) (Carey 1972, 47). The rarity of references to the fool’s sexual interaction with the mother (even in the openly obscene lore) is testimony to the essentially pre-Oedipal nature of his relationship with her.

54. See Barag et al. 1979, item no. 1696.

55. Afanasiev 1973, 334–35. For the original Russian, see Afanas’ev 1984–85 (1873), vol. 3, 130–31. I have corrected some infelicities in the Guterman translation.

56. Thanks to Yuri Druzhnikov for pointing this out.

57. Baranskaia 1989, 283.

58. Likhachev 1987, vol. 2, 427.

59. Kruglov 1988–89, vol. 3, 400–403.

60. Tolstoi 1960–65, vol. 10, 48–54. Professor Gary Jahn of the University of Minnesota has pointed out to me that the Tolstoi variant is based on a tale collected by Kirsha Danilov in the late eighteenth century.

61. Thanks to Catherine Chvany for the latter suggestion.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7

1. As quoted from a 1982 issue of Krest’ianka by Bridger 1987, 140.

2. See Rozanov’s Semeinyi vopros, 1903, vol. 1, 311–12.

3. Dal’ 1984, vol. 1,291.

4. Stites 1990 (1978), 7.

5. E.g., Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 19–20.

6. Ibid., 29.

7. Ibid., 6.

8. Worobec 1991, 213.

9. See Cherniavsky 1961 on the ruler myth in tsarist Russia.

10. See, among others: Antonov-Ovseyenko 1983, 229, 269, 306; Rancour-Laferriere 1988a, 112; Belkin 1991a, 4.

11. Bolshakoff 1977, 176–77 is quoting the mystic Alexander Putilov, also known as Anthony (italics added).

12. Friedrich 1972, 285.

13. Kuznetsova 1980, 98.

14. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 153.

15. See, for example: Chodorow 1978; Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 260–67.

16. Smith 1973; Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 123–24. Cf. Maksimenko (1988), who discusses the “matrifocalization” of the urban Russian family during the late Soviet period. Bronfenbrenner speaks of the “mother-centered family” and even “matriarchal patterns” in the Soviet Union (1972, 71ff.).

17. The Soviet anthropological/sociological tradition, influenced by Johann Bachofen’s Das Mutterrecht (1861) and Friedrich Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), has tended to support a “matriarchal” theory of human origins (see: Plotkin and Howe 1985; Kharchev 1979, 10ff.; Kosven 1948; Matorin 1931; Meletinskij 1975, 253; Reshetov 1970 is a daring exception). The book by Kosven, titled The Matriarchate, alternates between erudition and Stalinist crudity. Even the ex-Soviet feminist Tatyana Mamonova speaks of “matriarchal Rus’” and the “matriarchal roots in Russian folklore” (1989, 3–8).

Professional anthropologists in the West and various other scholars have rightly rejected the notion of “matriarchy.” No evidence has been found for a society characterized by matrifocal family relations, matrilineal inheritance, and pervasive female dominance of adult males. See Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 118–24, for a review of the literature. As feminist Sherry Ortner says, “the search for a genuinely egalitarian, let alone matriarchal, culture has proved fruitless” (1974, 70).

18. Sakharov 1989 (1885), 50–51.

19. Dicks 1952, 143.

20. Berdiaev 1971, 10. Early Berdiaev is more revealing on this topic. See Berdiaev 1990 (1918), 8–36.

21. Nekrasov 1967, vol. 3, 244, as translated by Gorodetzky 1973, 78.

22. Many of the maternal phenomena that I have enumerated in this section are discussed by Joanna Hubbs in her interesting recent book Mother Russia (1988). The enormous literature on motherhood and mother imagery in Russian culture also includes, among others, the following valuable sources: Maksimov 1909, vol. 18, 259ff,; Rybakov 1981, 379–92, 438–70; 1987, 244–47, 437–38; Dicks 1952; Vakar 1961, 67ff.; Barker 1986; Kogan 1982, 97–114; Strotmann 1959; Billington 1968, 19–20; Dunham 1960; Kalustova 1985; Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 11–20, 296–98, 348–51, 358–62; vol. 2, 135–39; Isaiia 1989; Matorin 1931; Uspenskii 1988; Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 2, 307–8; Ivanits 1989, 15–16, 20–21; Levin 1991; Ransel 1988; 1991; Becker 1990, 110ff.; Siniavskii 1991, 181–92. The figure on “Heroine Mother” awards comes from an anonymous article in Argumenty i fakty (3–9 March 1990, p. 1).

23. Drummond and Perkins 1987, 26; Dreizin and Priestly 1982, 42–43; Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 226; Isačenko 1976, 362–64; Uspenskii 1988.

24. Quoted by Uspenskii 1988, 215, from a collection of lore gathered in the Smolensk area in the late nineteenth century.

25. Uspenskii’s assertion (1988, 245) that the basis of mat is the image of a dog defiling mother earth has historical validity. But the massive body of historical and comparative linguistic evidence which Uspenskii brings to bear on the phrase “Eb tvoiu mat’” is not something today’s Russian (or any Russian in the past) could possibly have been aware of. The Russian who exclaims “Eb tvoiu mat’!” is not making learned allusions, but is expressing gut feelings about maternal sexuality.

26. Uspenskii 1988, 210.

27. Siniavskii 1992, 3.

28. Coe 1984, 44–58.

29. E.g., Kanzer 1948; Besançon 1967, 182–218.

30. Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 145–66; cf. Cherniavsky 1961, 214.

31. Siniavskii 1974, 183.

32. See the poem “Na dne preispodnei” in Markov and Sparks 1967, 520.

33. Solzhenitsyn 1975, 358.

34. See Hackel 1975, 174, 212.

35. Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 18.

36. Ibid., 19.

37. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 287.

38. Ibid., 291.

39. I have argued elsewhere (Rancour-Laferriere 1985) that this type of semiosis is a cross-cultural universal.

40. Abandonment of the wife is another alternative frequently resorted to by men in matrifocal cultures. For example, among the Minankabau of Sumatra, or the Black Carib of Belize, or American ghetto blacks, a man is very likely to abandon his mate (Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 123–24, 192–95). In Russia abandonment did not become widespread until the Soviet period, but a husband could always legitimately express hostility by beating the mother of his children. Indeed, a man who neither beat a woman nor abandoned her was considered a strange fellow (see 154 herein).

41. Dicks 1960, 643.

42. Cf. Dicks 1952, 143, 145.

43. An exception would be the “tsar-father,” who was sometimes said to suffer in Christlike fashion (e.g., Cherniavsky 1961, 187; Zhivov and Uspenskii 1987).

44. Nekrasov 1967, vol. 3, 240.

45. Thompson 1989, 503.

46. Pasternak 1989 (1956), 294.

47. Dicks 1960, 643.

48. As quoted by Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 159.

49. Koenigsberg 1977, 6.

50. Billington 1968, 20.

51. Dostoievsky 1949 (1877), vol. 2, 846.

52. Nekrasov 1967, vol. 2, 274.

53. As quoted by Gray 1990, 168.

54. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 16.

55. Siniavskii 1991, 185.

56. Ivanits 1989, 21.

57. Strotmann 1959, 195.

58. Ibid., 195.

59. Isaiia 1989, 122.

60. Ibid., 123.

61. Solov’ev 1966–69, vol. 9, 188.

62. Siniavskii 1991, 186.

63. Uspenskii 1988, 272.

64. See 141 herein.

65. Hubbs 1988, 112.

66. For example Matorin 1931, 5; Kovalevskii 1895, 150.

67. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 294, 302.

68. Ibid., 274.

69. Nekrasov 1967, vol. 2, 371; cf. Heldt 1987, 34.

70. Heldt 1987, 35.

71. Lermontov 1961–62, vol. 4, 396.

72. Tolstoi 1960–65, vol. 7, 298, 301.

73. Pasternak 1989, 47–48.

74. Akhmatova 1973, 98.

75. Gromyko 1989, 16. Warner and Kustovskii are particularly clear and informative on Russian laments: 1990, 38–49, 71–77, 81–86, 105–6.

76. Pushkin 1962–66, vol. 7, 287.

77. Efimenko 1884, 81.

78. Ibid., 83.

79. Kuznetsova 1980, 50.

80. Ibid., 109.

81. Ibid., 150.

82. Kharchev 1970, 18.

83. Sysenko 1981, 7, 27.

84. Worobec 1991, 177.

85. Elsewhere (Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 247–59) I have developed a sociobiological explanation for why, cross-culturally, female deference tends to go with male dominance.

86. E.g., Myl’nikova and Tsintsius 1926, 147; Worobec 1991, 167–70.

87. As quoted from the tsarist law code of 1857 by Kharchev 1979, 123.

88. E.g., Pevin 1893, 247; Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 68; Myl’nikova and Tsintsius 1926, 147.

89. Worobec 1991, 187.

90. Ibid., 188.

91. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 289, 290, 291, 293.

92. Worobec 1991, 189.

93. Efimenko 1884, 114.

94. Worobec 1991, 189.

95. Kollmann 1991, 70, italics added.

96. Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 6.

97. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 288, 290, 291.

98. Efimenko 1884, 82.

99. Krafft-Ebing 1929, 36.

100. Kovalevsky 1891, 45.

101. Ralston 1872, 10.

102. As defined by Laplanche and Pontalis 1973, 335.

103. SE, vol. 17, 45.

104. Maksimenko 1988, 145.

105. Freud, SE, vol. 17, 47.

106. Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 277.

107. Nemilov 1932 (1930), 130.

108. The same is true of the verb “parit”’ (“to steam,” “to beat”) (Baiburin 1993, 73).

109. De Armond 1971, 103.

110. He might lie on top of her all night long, but still he would not be able to perform. Cf. Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 14.

111. Information provided by Yuri Druzhnikov.

112. Horney 1967, 223–24.

113. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 24, italics added.

114. Attwood 1990, 212. The “double burden” is not an altogether Soviet invention. Russian women who labored in factories before the Bolshevik Revolution often complained about it. Rose Glickman quotes a woman textile worker who, in 1908, declared: “We women have two burdens. At the factory we serve the boss, and at home the husband is our ruler. Nowhere do they see the woman as a real person” (Glickman 1984, 26). Christine Worobec has also pointed to precursors of the woman’s double burden in post-emancipation peasant life, e.g., field work added to domestic labor during the short harvest season (Worobec 1991, 206–8).

115. The audience obliges with “prolonged applause.” See Brezhnev 1977, 1.

116. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 15.

117. Lapidus points out that in 1946 there were 59 men for every 100 women in the 35–59 age group (1988, 91). For more figures, see Buckley 1989, 189.

118. Lapidus 1988, 92–93. See also Kharchev and Golod 1971, 42, 137; Zaslavskaya 1990, 94.

119. Lapidus 1988, 93; Iankova 1975, 43; Kuznetsova 1980, 19; Sysenko 1981, 76; Shlapentokh 1984, 179; Shineleva 1990, 35; Arutiunian 1992, 171. Although employment is of intrinsic value to a woman, it is of even greater value to a man. For example, Boiko (1988, 103) found that, in a large sample of Leningraders, a good position at work is rated significantly higher by men than by women.

120. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 165.

121. See, for example Lapidus 1978, 171ff.; 1988, 93–99.

122. Tereshkova 1987, 3. For a detailed analysis of women’s labor in the Soviet countryside, see Bridger 1987.

123. Goskomstat 1990, 41, 42.

124. Shineleva 1990, 47.

125. Ibid., 37.

126. Lapidus 1988, 103.

127. Iankova (1978, 99) says women in urban areas spend 30–35 hours per week on domestic work, women in rural areas 45–55 hours, and men 15–20 hours. Kharchev (1979, 281) cites some Leningrad data showing that women spend 30.5 hours per week, men 10.5. See also Shlapentokh 1984, 191–93; Bridger 1987, 101, 108–13.

128. The World’s Women (1991), 101, table 7.

129. Robinson et al. 1989, 133.

130. Shlapentokh 1984, 190.

131. Remennick 1993, 51.

132. Goskomstat 1990, 42–43.

133. Ispa 1983, 5.

134. Iankova 1978, 78, 108.

135. Alexandrova 1984, 49.

136. Marshall 1991, 6.

137. Sarnoff 1988, 209. Cf. Fenichel 1945, 364; Leites 1979, 14–15; Asch 1988, 100, 113.

138. Lapidus 1988, 107.

139. Peers 1985, 124; cf. Allott 1985, 196, who speaks of the “parasitic behaviour” of many Soviet men.

140. Iankova 1975, 48.

141. Sysenko 1981, 53, referring to the work of A. E. Kotliar and S. Ia. Turchaninova.

142. Khanga 1991, A15.

143. Kuznetsova 1988, 47.

144. See, for example, Allott 1985.

145. Golod 1984, 51.

146. Sysenko 1981, 86.

147. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 191.

148. As quoted in an interview with Feliks Medvedev 1992, 97.

149. Quoted by Merezhkovskii 1914, vol. 15, 148.

150. Gray 1990, 39.

151. Ibid., 47.

152. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 183.

153. Iankova 1978, 111.

154. Ibid., 99

155. Lenin 1958–65, vol. 39, 202.

156. Ibid., 24 (italics Lenin’s). Cf. Iankova 1978, 99.

157. Lenin 1958–65, vol. 39, 202.

158. See also Lenin 1958–65, vol. 42, 368–69.

159. Engels 1985 (1884), 105. Engels is famous for comparing the woman in a marriage to the exploited proletariat, the man to an exploiting bourgeois (ibid.). Engels also regarded the bourgeois marriage as a financial transaction in which the husband essentially supported a prostitute for life. For a very informative essay on the attitudes of early Marxist theoreticians toward the women’s movement, see Meyer 1977.

160. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 76.

161. As translated by Mary Buckley from the stenographic report of a conference of the wives of shock workers held in 1936 (Buckley 1989, 116).

162. Iurkevich 1970, 192, as translated by Lapidus 1988, 113.

163. See especially Buckley 1989, 136.

164. Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 108ff.

165. Boiko 1988, 103.

166. Iankova 1979, 110. Cf. Shlapentokh 1984, 203. The figures given by Arutiunian (1992, 182–83, table 18) appear to indicate that, the more respondents say the wife makes the major decisions in the family, the less stable the marriage is likely to be.

167. As cited by Maksimenko 1988, 152.

168. Ibid.

169. Kharchev 1979, 258.

170. Allott 1985, 197.

171. Dunham 1960, 481.

172. As translated by Dunham 1979, 223.

173. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 13.

174. See, for example: Kharchev 1979, 222; Kuznetsova 1980, 167.

175. Molodtsov 1976, 11.

176. Iankova 1978, 128.

177. Boiko 1988, 201.

178. Kon 1970, 11.

179. As quoted from a 1982 issue of Krest’ianka by Bridger 1987, 135.

180. Khripkova and Kolesov 1981, 120–21.

181. Zhukhovitskii 1984. Compare Kharchev (1979, 222), who says that a woman is disappointed and humiliated when her husband tries to run away from his traditional role of moral superiority and responsibility, that is, when he attempts to “surpass her in weakness.”

182. Grafova 1984, 13.

183. As quoted from a 1977 issue of Nedelia by Attwood 1990, 167.

184. Kon 1970, 11, italics added.

185. Zhukhovitskii 1984, 12, italics added.

186. Vaksberg 1965, 2.

187. Iurkevich 1970, 193ff.

188. Dunham 1979, 216, 218, italics added.

189. Afanas’ev 1975 (1872), 45–49.

190. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 275.

191. Platonov 1984–85, vol. 2, 178–204.

192. From Kon’s interview with Larisa Kuznetsova 1980, 189.

193. Attwood 1990, 95.

194. But see Kharchev 1979, 201–2, 230, where impotence is explicitly (but very briefly) discussed.

In his recent book on sexology Kon says that “in contemporary society” (he does not refer specifically to Russian or Soviet society) “the emancipation of women” can sometimes cause “psychogenic impotence” in men reared according to traditional ideas of male dominance. See Kon 1988, 120–21. For a detailed theoretical discussion of the causes of psychogenic impotence, see Rancour-Laferriere 1985, 317–30.

195. As quoted by Francine du Plessix Gray 1990, 76.

196. For detailed arguments on this topic, see my Signs of the Flesh (1985).

197. Nemilov 1932 (1930), 194–95, italics added.

198. Attwood 1990, 127.

199. Lapidus 1978, 288.

200. See, for example: Kharchev 1970, 18; Kharchev and Golod 1971, 162, 163; Lapidus 1978, 287; Iankova 1978, 126; Attwood 1990, 170ff.; Boiko 1988, 194.

201. Holt 1980, 45.

202. Hansson and Lidén 1983, xv.

203. Bridger 1987, 136–38.

204. Baranskaia 1989 (1969), 301.

205. Hansson and Lidén 1983, 16.

206. Sysenko 1981, 67.

207. For example, Rodzinskaia 1981, 109; Bridger 1987, 138ff.

208. Attwood 1990, 177; Kuznetsova 1987, 23. Cf. Shlapentokh 1984, 208; Bridger 1987, 142ff.

209. Shlapentokh 1984, 182; Bridger 1987, 142ff.

210. Gray 1990, 69.

211. For example: Gray 1990, 59; Allott 1985, 197; Shineleva 1990, 84.

212. See, for example, a cartoon by A. Gartvich which appeared on the back page of Literaturnaia gazeta, 8 May 1991.

213. Goldberg 1992, 8.

214. Gray 1990, 83.

215. Mamaladze 1985, 11.

216. Lapidus 1988, 111; Shlapentokh 1984, 176.

217. See, for example, Sysenko 1981, 77; Boiko 1988, 209; Buckley 1989, 197.

218. Zaslavskaya 1989, 137.

219. Ibid.

220. Zaslavskaya 1990, 95.

221. E.g., Shineleva 1990, 84.

222. Thanks to Barbara Milman for the algebra.

223. As quoted from Izvestiia by Buckley 1989, 203.

224. Quoted from a flyer published in Women East-West, September, 1991, p. 17.

225. Scott 1992, 18.

226. Heuvel 1992, 13.

227. Arutiunian 1992, 189.

228. See Gurova 1992, 10; Azhgikhina 1993.

229. Goldberg 1992, 8.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 8

1. Among the observed physiological effects of the bania on the bather are: increased pulse, increased respiratory rate, slightly increased body temperature, significant decrease in body weight (due to heavy perspiration), decreased muscle strength, etc. Flagellation by means of the veniki supposedly increases peripheral blood circulation. See Godlevskii 1883.

2. Shukshin 1975, vol. 1, 447.

3. As quoted by Cross 1991, 34.

4. Olearius 1967 (1656), 161.

5. Kabanov 1986, 136.

6. Smith 1976, 117, 118.

7. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 45.

8. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 170, 173.

9. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 45.

10. Zelenin 1991 (1927), 284.

11. See Ivanits 1989, 60, 161–62.

12. Thanks to Gary Rosenshield for pointing out this passage.

13. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 170.

14. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 45, 331.

15. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 193.

16. Zoshchenko 1978, vol. 1, 107–9.

17. Selivanov 1990, Illustrations 60 and 61.

18. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 83.

19. For examples of flogging by means of the birch, see: Kolchin 1987, 73, 76, 124, 262; Belliustin 1985 (1858), 73. Steven Hoch (1986) reports that, of 4,187 recorded instances of punishment meted out to serfs on the estate of Petrovskoe in Tambov province in the early to mid-nineteenth century, 97.8 percent consisted of whipping by means of a birch rod (“rozga”).

20. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 173.

21. Ibid., 175.

22. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 83.

23. See: Sakharov 1989 (1885), 347ff.; Shein 1898, 344ff.; Shapovalova 1977; Sokolova 1979, 188ff.; Gromyko 1986, 181–93; Gromyko 1991, 345–60; Bernshtam 1988, 175ff.; Zelenin 1991 (1927), 153, 395; Propp 1963, 58ff., 75ff., 95ff.; Propp 1975, 7; Hubbs 1988, 71–74; Brudnyi 1968, 97–100; Warner and Kustovskii 1990, 28–30; Arutiunian 1992, 394; Stites 1992, 114, 140, 172. See also Roberta Reeder’s informative comments to Propp 1975, 81ff.

24. Okudzhava 1992, 5. The subtext is the title of a Soviet film “There Is No Peace Beneath the Olives” (thanks to Yuri Druzhnikov for this information).

25. E.g., Propp 1961, 298. Tree names were utilized as signals during matchmaking ceremonies (Dal’ 1955, vol. 1, 83). The droopy flexibility of the birch probably explains why “birch” was a code word for “yes” during matchmaking, while the inflexible uprightness of the pine, fir, and oak is the likely reason why these trees represented a negative reply to the matchmaker.

26. Klimas 1991.

27. Propp 1963, 77.

28. Komarovich 1982 (1936), 9.

29. For example Matorin 1931, 22.

30. Tolstaia 1992, 22.

31. Bernshtam 1988, 175.

32. Friedrich 1970, 157–58.

33. There is also a series of folktales in which a fool chops open the trunk of a birch tree and finds treasure there (e.g., Afanas’ev 1984–85 [1873], vol. 3, 128–29).

34. Shein 1898, 344.

35. For example Dmitrieva 1988, 212.

36. Translated from Shein 1898, 346.

37. Dmitrieva (1988, 209–12) suggests that ritual steaming with birch veniki in the bania is connected to ancient worship of a birch-totem. The psychoanalytic theory being offered here would seem to complement this hypothesis because it posits that both the birch tree and the bania are maternal icons tied to sadomasochistic ideas. That is, the hypothesised historical connection is supported by a psychological connection.

38. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 45. Cf. Vahros 1966, 25.

39. Illiustrov 1904, 308.

40. Gray 1990, 207.

41. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 2, 307.

42. ANSSSR 1950–65, vol. 2, 494.

43. Hubbs 1988, 56.

44. Rank 1964 (1914), 38.

45. For example: Niederland 1956–57; Dundes 1986; Rancour-Laferriere 1993c. For an interesting recent study of water imagery in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, see Syrkin 1991.

46. Kabanov 1986, 137.

47. Other places where women would give birth included the peasant hut (sometimes inside of the large stove), a cattle shed or storehouse, or, at harvest time, an open field or woods. Scholars do not always agree on which place was the most commonly used for childbirth. There was, no doubt, much regional variation, with the bania apparently predominating as a birthing site in the more northern and central regions. See: Pokrovskii 1884, 41ff.; Rein 1889, 8ff.; Zelenin 1991 (1927), 319–22; Baiburin 1993, 91; Dunn 1974, 385; Ramer 1978, 229; Ransel 1988, 267.

48. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 45.

49. Pokrovskii 1884, 41.

50. Dal’ 1955 (1880–82), vol. 1, 45.

51. Ransel (1991, 116) cites several ethnographic sources on the ritual uncleanliness of birthing mothers. Cf. Pokrovskii 1884, 41–48; Rein 1889, 10; Baiburin 1993, 91ff.

52. Ransel 1991, 116. Cf. Rein 1889, 18.

53. Ambodik 1784, part I, xviii.

54. Sanches 1779, 11ff.

55. Ambodik 1784, part I, xxiii.

56. Cf. one current meaning of the verb “parit’,” i.e., “to flog” (Gamaiunov 1992, 13).

57. Pokrovskii 1884, 42, 46, 77–78, 83–88. Cf. Ransel 1991, 117; Dunn 1974, 389.

58. Martynova 1978, 181.

59. Listova 1989, 148. Cf. Pokrovskii 1884, 46.

60. Listova 1989, 148.

61. Pokrovskii 1884, 47.

62. Ibid., 84.

63. Cross 1991, plates 1, 3, 8.

64. Likhachev and Panchenko 1976, 73.

65. Kabanov 1986, 136.

66. Masson 1800, vol. 2, 119.

67. Ibid., 120.

68. Gennep 1960, 130.

69. Zelenin, however, mentions cases where not the girlfriends, but a male sorcerer (“znakhar’”) would wash the naked bride to protect her from evil influences (1991 [1927], 340). Cf. also Myl’nikova and Tsintsius 1926, 66, 68; Baiburin 1993, 73.

70. For example: Pevin 1893; Myl’nikova and Tsintsius 1926, 60–69; Vahros 1966, 136, 168ff.; Propp 1975, 21–23; Pushkareva and Shmeleva 1974, 348; Worobec 1991, 161–62; Zorin 1981, 93–95.

71. See especially: Kolesnitskaia and Telegina 1977; Gvozdikova and Shapovalova 1982. During parts of the marriage sequence besides the prenuptial bath the “krasota” could take forms other than a headpiece, e.g., a little birch tree or a little fir tree. There is considerable potential for further psychoanalytic study here.

72. Kolpakova 1973, 254.

73. Bernshtam 1988, 242ff.; cf. id. 1978, 52, 67–68.

74. See Engel 1989, 231–33.

75. See: Rancour-Laferriere 1989a, 238–40; Bernshtam 1991. In some areas the very nightshirt the bride wore to consummate her marriage was called “kalina,” i.e., “snowball berry” (Worobec 1991, 170).

76. Cf. Baiburin’s characterization of a woman’s marriage as deprivation of her right to further participate in youthful carousals, i.e., “nastuplenie nevoli” (1993, 69).

77. Myl’nikova and Tsintsius 1926, 67.

78. Ibid. Cf. Smirnov 1877, 28.

79. Worobec 1991, 161.

80. Kolpakova 1973, 230, 231.

81. Pushkareva and Shmeleva (1974, 348) speak of a ritual of “beating off the dawn” (“otbivanie zor’”) before the wedding.

82. Kolpakova 1973, 231.

83. Gvozdikova and Shapovalova 1982, 271.

84. In the marriage lyrics there are numerous uses of the word “alien” (“chuzhoi”) to characterize the bride’s new in-laws (e.g., Kolpakova 1973, 26, 59, 62, 97, etc.).

85. Istomin 1892, 141.

86. Kolpakova 1973, 260; cf. Pevin 1893, 233.

87. There was even a possibility that she might in the near future give birth to a child in the same bania, although this was much less likely because she would be living with her husband’s family elsewhere.

88. Propp 1961, 268.

89. See Propp 1975, 22.

90. Kolpakova 1973, 232.

91. See: Pevin 1893, 232; Worobec 1991, 161.

92. Gennep 1960, 132.

93. Gvozdikova and Shapovalova 1982, 272.

94. See especially Eremina 1991.

95. Moyle 1987, 229.

96. Many ethnographic and folkloristic discussions of the bania have in the past focused on its “unclean” and “pagan” aspects, rather than on the masochistic aspect. The bania was devoid of Christian icons, for example, or one was not supposed to go to church on the same day that one went to the bania. The bania had its own demon-in-residence, termed a “bannik” or “baennik” (just as most other significant places in Russian traditional culture had their special spirits: the peasant hut had its “domovoi,” the threshing-barn its “ovinnik,” the forest its “leshii,” bodies of water a “vodianoi,” the open field a “polevoi,” etc.).

The bannik and other local demons would themselves take steam baths, preferring to be fourth in line after three rounds of steaming by humans (a person who tried to go fourth might be burned or even killed by the bathhouse demon). Various witches, evil spirits, and unclean dead might gather in the bania. One was not supposed to make loud noises there. Both the mother who gave birth there and her midwife were considered unclean until they performed a special cleansing ceremony, usually a joint handwashing. A mother’s newborn child could not be left in the bania, for fear an evil spirit might steal it before it could be baptized. And so on. See, for example Maksimov 1909, vol. 18, 51–57; Vahros 1966, 79–95; Ivanits 1989, 59–60; Levin 1991; Zelenin 1991 (1927), 283–85, 319ff.; Listova 1989.

These beliefs reveal an overall sense of unease about the bania, and they are no doubt related to the very real dangers associated with its use. For example, people were known to suffocate in the bania, most likely as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning from lack of ventilation and improper timing in firing the stove. This danger would have a certain appeal to a masochist, although it was hardly the primary aspect of the bania which appealed to masochistic impulses.

The most dangerous event to occur in a bania was of course childbirth. Mother and/or child could die, or some complication could occur, leading to serious illness. Furthermore, there was little that could be done. Nature took its course because peasant midwives were largely ignorant of real medicine. Superstition thrives on a soil of fear compounded by ignorance. Even without complications childbirth was painful. Women suffered unspeakable torments giving birth in the bania. The ritual postpartum cleansing must have helped the participants suppress some very unpleasant memories. The rule that one was supposed to speak quietly and avoid any noisy behavior in a bania was undoubtedly connected to the fact that a woman screamed her heart out while giving birth there. The notion that the bannik could do painful things to you was probably related to the intense pain of childbirth, for the newborn was typically referred to as a “little devil” (“chertenok”).

The various superstitions and apotropaic practices concerning the bania would themselves make an interesting subject for detailed psychoanalytic study. For the most part they are not connected to masochism, however, which is why I am not investigating them here. Masochism plays very little role when there is absolutely no choice. One did not have to steam and beat oneself with veniki, but, when labor started, a woman had to endure.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 9

1. For example, Alan Roland (1988) writes about the “we-self” of Japan and India, as opposed to the “I-self” of Western countries. Triandis (1990) provides an extensive survey of the sophisticated empirical studies which have been done on individualism and collectivism in a variety of cultures. Unfortunately, almost nothing is said about Russia. It is clear from what Triandis says, however, that ethnic Russians would fit at the collectivist end of the spectrum. For example, Triandis finds that a sharp distinction between “ingroup” and “outgroup” characterizes collectivism (56). This terminology perfectly reflects the important cultural opposition of “svoi” (“own”) vs. “chuzhoi” (“other”) in Russia.

Inkeles, Hanfmann, and Beier (1958), utilizing some standard psychological tests, found a much stronger need for affiliation in a sample of former Soviet Russian citizens than in a comparable sample of American subjects.

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s book Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R. (1972) provides substantial documentation of the contrast between the collectivist orientation of child upbringing (“vospitanie”) in Soviet Russia and the somewhat haphazard individualism fostered by American child rearing.

Boris Segal (1990) demonstrates an awareness of the cross-cultural studies, and explicitly discusses the “communal spirit that was the foundation of the old Russian society” as well as the “low degree of individualism” in Soviet society (503).

2. See Esaulov 1992 who, although he argues that the extremes of sobornost’ and totalitarianism are “two faces of Russian culture,” does not deal with the underlying masochism that unites the apparent polarity.

3. Gromyko 1986, 167.

4. Ivanov 1969, 131.

5. As quoted by Schmemann 1991, A9.

6. See Peskov 1992.

7. Examples provided by Belkin 1991b, 13.

8. Maiakovskii 1970 (1924), vol. 3, 217.

9. Miller 1961, 68.

10. See the section titled (after Mayakovsky) “The Individual Is Nothing” in Smith 1991, 194–99.

11. Klugman 1989, 205, italics added. Urie Bronfenbrenner provides chilling examples of how grade school teachers in the Soviet Union manipulated the student group itself into disciplining individual students (Bronfenbrenner 1972, 57ff.).

12. Berdiaev 1990, 39.

13. Nikol’skii 1898, 66. By comparison, says Nikol’skii, educated Russians have a downright “cult of personality” (“kul’t lichnosti”). Clearly this phrase was not invented just to describe Joseph Stalin.

14. Nikol’skii 1898, 83–84.

15. Okudzhava 1992, 5.

16. Smith 1991, 199.

17. Ibid., 202.

18. Zenova 1992.

19. Here I translate a typical attitude paraphrased to me by Irina Bukina in Moscow in May of 1990: “Esli ia budu zhit’ plokho, pust’ i oni budut zhit’ plokho.”

20. Example kindly provided by Konstantin Pimkin.

21. Cf. Siniavskii 1992, 3.

22. Zaslavskaya 1990, 126.

23. See, for example, Gromyko 1991, 57–63, for extensive documentation.

24. Smith 1991, 203.

25. Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 95.

26. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 2, 148, 149.

27. See Smith 1991, chap. 11.

28. Conversation with Dmitrii Starodubtsev in Smith 1991, 229.

29. Belkin 1991b, 15.

30. Grafova 1991, 6.

31. Kochubei 1990, 13.

32. Likhachev 1992, 6.

33. Katerli and Shmidt 1992, 12.

34. Belkin 1993, 185, italics added.

35. Prokushev 1990.

36. From an anonymous introduction in Literaturnaia gazeta, 9 October, 1991, p. 2.

37. Anzieu 1984 (1975), 118.

38. Ibid., 73.

39. Ibid., 118.

40. Ibid., 122. Cf. GAP 1987, 5, and various items in 252 n. 48 above.

41. Anzieu 1984, 73–76, 140–41. Cf. Freud (SE, vol. 18, 127) who believes that it is a paternal leader of the group, rather than the group itself which takes the place of the ego ideal.

42. Chasseguet-Smirgel 1985 (1975), 82. Cf. Koenigsberg on “the country as an omnipotent mother” (1977, 6 ff.).

43. Kernberg 1984, 15.

44. There is an enormous literature on the Russian land commune. For a generous sampling of recent views, see the volume edited by Bartlett (1990). An excellent Soviet study is Aleksandrov (1976). See Worobec (1991) for a clear and engaging treatment of the complexities of peasant economic life in post-emancipation Russia. Hoch (1986, chap. 4) gives a good discussion of communal functions in the pre-emancipation period. Gromyko (1991, 155ff.) provides a well-documented but rather idealized view of the peasant’s relationship to the commune in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. None of these works pays much attention to the psychology (and particularly the masochism) of the individual commune member.

45. See especially Gromyko 1991, 73–85.

46. See, for example Nikol’skii 1898, 72–73.

47. As quoted in Kolchin 1987, 332.

48. Leroy-Beaulieu 1902–5, vol. 2, 43.

49. E.g., Semenova-Tian-Shanskaia 1914, 95.

50. Gromyko 1991, 73–85.

51. Kingston-Mann 1991, 43.

52. Worobec 1991, 45. See Aleksandrov (1976, 294–313) on the commune’s powerful influence in family affairs.

53. Worobec 1991, 147.

54. See Frank 1990 for a detailed treatment of Russian charivaris and other collective punishments.

55. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 315–16.

56. Rittikh 1903, 51.

57. Dal’ 1984 (1862), vol. 1, 316.

58. Ibid.

59. Kuz’min and Shadrin 1989, 138.

60. Fedotov 1981 (1949), 166.

61. Illiustrov 1904, 312–13.

62. Mironov 1990 (1985), 18–19.

63. Gorer and Rickman 1962 (1949), 135.

64. Mead 1951, 26.

65. See especially Macey 1990, 227–28.

66. Treadgold 1959, 107.

67. Confino 1985, 42.

68. Clines 1990, p. A2.

69. Taubman 1988, p. A6.

70. This is not to deny that there are many differences as well (social, economic, political) between the tsarist peasant commune and the Soviet collective farm. See, for example: Kerblay 1985; Medvedev 1987.

71. See, for example Seliunin 1989, 202 (= Seliunin 1988, 186).

72. Medvedev 1987, 362–65.

73. Solzhenitsyn 1989, 530–31, italics added. The Russian original is Solzhenitsyn 1978-, vol. 12, 168.

74. Losev 1990b (1941), 15. For the Russian original, see Losev 1990a, 6.

75. Ibid. I have had to make some corrections in the translation.

76. Ibid.

77. Ibid.

78. Berdiaev 1991 (1949), 120–21.

79. Ibid., 151 ff.

80. Berdiaev 1990, 295.

81. Ibid., 294.

82. Here it is appropriate to note a general tendency in Russian philosophy: things should be “united” in some fashion. Selves should somehow be joined to others. This is already apparent in Chaadaev, it is especially clear in the Slavophile notion of the union of self and collective (e.g., Khomiakov’s sobornosf), it becomes “total unity” (“vsëedinstvo”) in Solov’ev, and appears as “multi-unity” or “all-unity” (“mnogoedinstvo,” “vseedinstvo”) in the works of Fedorov. George Young’s comments on this philosophical topic are quite pertinent: “In all these models, the individual is incomplete in and of itself. The individual completes himself, becomes whole, only by becoming part of a greater whole. Russian thinkers, like Russian composers, love the strong chorus” (Young 1979, 179). The “greater whole” that Young speaks of here implies an asymmetrical relationship with something lesser, i.e., the self as an isolated, insignificant individual. It is this obligatory lesser status, this acknowledgment of one’s own personal insignificance in the face of the all—that comprises the masochistic element in Russian mystical philosophy. One submits “freely,” says Solov’ev, i.e., masochistically. Even the great antimasochist Fedorov, who resists submission to death with such vehemence, and who rejects altruism as “slavery” and “self-destruction” (Fedorov 1906–13, vol. 2, 201), envisages a masochistic submission of the many to the all as the ideal alternative. Otherwise the “project” he proposes could not have been termed the “general task” (“obshchee delo”). Fedorov does not want the “blind force of nature” to coerce humankind, but his own writing is ultimately coercive, or conversely, it invites moral masochism in readers. Here it is ironic that Fedorov resisted making his writings generally available (“not for sale” is printed on the title page of the Vernyi edition). He must have sensed that widespread, popular acceptance of his ideas would have been uncomfortably close to acceptance of the “blind force of nature.”

83. Berdiaev 1990, 297.

84. Berdiaev 1991, 179.

85. The notion of “Godhumanhood” (“Bogochelovechestvo”) is of course not original with Berdiaev. Among Russians it played an especially important role in the thinking of Vladimir Solov’ev, and it endures to this day in Russian theology (e.g., Men’ 1991, 127–29). The epithet “God-human” is an ancient one, referring to Christ, who was God become human (Greek “theandros” or “theanthropos”).

86. Berdiaev 1991, 177.

87. Ibid., 189.

88. Ibid., 177. Berdiaev mistakenly believes that his idea of freedom contradicts the traditional Russian idea of smirenie (he speaks of a “lozhnoe uchenie o smirenii”—ibid.).

89. Berdiaev 1990, 13.

90. Ibid., 17.

91. Ibid.

92. Berdiaev 1991, 209.

93. Ibid., 121.

94. Blok 1971, vol. 3, 178. As translated in Markov and Sparks 1967, 183.

95. Fellow bird-watchers please note that “korshun” is really a “kite,” but English “buzzard” comes closer to the menacing connotation of the Russian word.

96. Obukhova 1989. Another possible subtext for Blok’s poem is a poem by Ivan Savvich Nikitin (1824–61) about a falcon (“sokol”) which has been chained in the steppes of Rus’ for a thousand years, and which tears out its own breast in vexation (see Prokushev 1990, 31–32).

97. Nekrasov 1967, vol. 2, 144.

98. Freud, SE, vol. 21, 237.

99. See “Zagovor na ukroshchenie gneva rodimoi matushki” in Sakharov 1989 (1885), 50–51.

100. Obukhova comes close to this conclusion by means of religious imagery: “It is out of this that the personality of the Son striving for crucifixion began” (1989, 209).

101. Khomiakov 1955, 50.

102. My translation of Blok 1971, vol. 3, 208. Again, apologies to my ornithologist friends. The bird in question is an accipiter of some kind.

103. Dostoyevsky 1950, 617.

104. Ibid., 720; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 15, 31.

105. See Browning 1989, 516.

106. Dostoyevsky 1950, 386; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 14, 291–92.

107. Dostoyevsky 1950, 344; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 14, 262.

108. The grandiose idea of bearing the guilt of others can apply temporally as well as spatially. In 1846 Khomiakov wrote a poem in which he asserted that Russians are responsible for, and should ask forgiveness for, the sins of their fathers (“Za temnye otsov deian’ia,” 1955, 61). In the twentieth century we have Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn saying essentially the same thing in his essay on repentance and self-limitation in the life of nations: “It is impossible to imagine a nation which throughout the course of its whole existence has no cause for repentance.” Or: “The nation is mystically welded together in a community of guilt, and its inescapable destiny is common repentance” (1976, 110, 112).

109. Browning 1989, 517.

110. Dal’ 1984, vol. 1, 315.

111. In Soviet politics such avoidance of responsibility was often referred to as “perestrakhovka,” which might be translated as “mutually playing safe.”

112. Kabakov 1990, 1, italics added.

113. Moroz 1993, 2.

114. Solzhenitsyn 1976, 118; Solzhenitsyn 1978-, vol. 9, 57.

115. Solzhenitsyn 1976, 132; Solzhenitsyn 1978-, vol. 9, 69.

116. In his recent essay Rebuilding Russia (1990) Solzhenitsyn gets more practical. He calls for “public repentance” from the Party, but he also notes that no one among the “former toadies of Brezhnevism” has expressed “personal repentance” (italics Solzhenitsyn’s). He also laments the fact that specific criminals such as Molotov and Kaganovich (the latter still alive at the time) had not been brought to justice (1991 [1990], 49–51).

In the late Soviet period calls for repentance, or outright acts of public repentance became common. The distinguished Russian philologist Dmitrii Likhachev, for example, declared that all Soviet citizens were responsible for not resisting their leaders, and should therefore repent. The prominent economist Oleg Bogomolov, in a 1990 article titled “I Cannot Absolve Myself from Guilt” castigated himself for failing to speak out against abuses under Brezhnev (see Teague 1990).

It seems to me that those who engage in loud cries of repentance are precisely the ones who need least to repent. Such breast-beating is masochistic in nature, and is not in character with the sadism required of a real murderer. A Solzhenitsyn will repent, but not a Molotov or a Kaganovich.

117. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 2, 962; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 131.

118. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 2, 977.

119. Ibid., 978–79; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 147.

120. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 2, 979, 980; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 147, 148.

121. Quoted by Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 139, translation in Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 2, 970.

122. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 2, 970; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 139.

123. See Levitt 1989, 122–46.

124. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 2, 970; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 139.

125. Cf. Fasmer 1986–87, vol. 2, 45, 490–93, and Townsend 1968, 251, on the linguistic aspects of this root morpheme. We should perhaps also keep in mind the ancient East Slavic pagan fertility figures of Rod and Rozhanitsa (cf. Ivanits 1989, 14–15; Fedotov 1975, vol. 1, 348–51; Hubbs 1988, 15, 81). Young (1979, 83–84) gives an interesting discussion of the use of -rod- words in Fedorov’s philosophy. Kathleen Parthé (1992, 8–9) finds that -rod- words play an important role in Russian Village Prose of the 1960s and 1970s.

126. Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 143, 144.

127. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 2, 968–70; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 26, 137–39.

128. Cf. the maternal association in Nikolai Nekrasov’s lines “…Tseluias’s mater’iu-zemleiu, / Kolos’ia beskonechnykh niv” (Nekrasov 1967, vol. 2, 13).

129. E.g., Aksakov 1861–80, vol. 1, 298.

130. See, for example: Chances 1978, chap. 4; Dowler 1982. The focus on a fruitful womb in the form of “pochva” (soil), “zemlia” (land), “lono” (bosom), etc. is also characteristic of today’s village-prose writers in Russia, such as Vasilii Belov and Valentin Rasputin, as Natal’ia Ivanova has recently observed in a controversial article (1992, 200).

131. Breger has offered an interesting explanation for Dostoevsky’s emotionalism about Pushkin in the Diary. It happens that Pushkin died about the same time that Dostoevsky’s mother died. Dostoevsky would thus have been mourning these two deaths simultaneously. Later on, in Breger’s view, Pushkin’s “idealized love for his mother was displaced onto Pushkin” (1989, 60). All the more reason, then, to expect covert maternal imagery in the Pushkin passages of the Diary.

Breger also believes that Dostoevsky’s idealization of the Russian people is a remnant of his idealization of his mother (e.g., 150). But Breger does not concern himself with the masochistic aspects of this problem, nor does he adduce intrinsic evidence for maternal imagery from the original Russian text.

132. Worobec 1991, 6.

133. Ibid., 19.

134. Dostoievsky 1949, vol. 1, 204; Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 22, 45.

135. Dostoevskii 1972–88, vol. 22, 48–49.

136. See Rice 1989; Breger 1989, 150.

137. There is much else of psychoanalytic interest in this episode. See, for example: Rice 1989; Rosen 1993, 423–25.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 10

1. For a detailed study of apocalypticism in modern Russian fiction, see Bethea 1989.

2. Berdiaev 1968 (1921), 230.