Vladimir Makanin and the Disorder of Post-Soviet Trauma

ABSTRACT

This study aims to demonstrate that post-Soviet Russian prose from 1991–2000 contains a critique of totalitarianism manifested as much on the level of literary problematics as on the art of the narrative itself. The first part of the study synthesizes the most important themes in post-Soviet Russian literature, among which resentment of the trauma caused by communism stands out. Among the various literary movements, postmodernism played a decisive role by adopting an aggressive stylistic stance in the radical spirit of the avantgarde whose aesthetic it continued. The second part of the study analyzes one of the most renowned novels of the period in order to depict a significant anti-totalitarian vision, Underground, or a Hero of Our Time (1998) by Vladimir Makanin. In addition to the critique of totalitarianism, Makanin’s novel offers a critical reflection on post-Soviet reality seen as an effect of the trauma of communism. The sombre social mural created by Makanin – emphasizing at least three topoi: the underground, the obshhaga ‘communal apartment block’, and the psychiatric hospital – casts a bleak shadow over the recent past, from the paternalistic communist state to the chaotic transitional period of Perestroika, all depicted against a controversial ideological, economic and political landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• The Soviet Union
• Perestroika
• Russian postmodernism
• samizdat
• the Soviet literary underground
• homo sovieticus

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Galina Nefagina, Russkaia proza vtoroi poloviny 80-h – nachala 90-h godov XX veka: Uchebnoe posobie dlia studentov filologicheskih fakul’tetov vuzov, (Minsk: Ekonompress, 1997), 10.

² For more thorough discussion of Russian conceptualism, see Camelia Dinu, ‘Gruparea Oberiu, avangarda și postmodernismul’, in Antoaneta Olteanu (ed.), Postmodernismul rus (Russian Postmodernism) (Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2018), 65–100.

³ Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992), 75.

⁴ Irina Skoropanova, Russkaia postmodernistskaia literatura. Novaia filosofiia, novyi iazyk, (Saint Petersburg: Nevskii prostor, 2001), 71.

⁵ Nefagina, Russkaia proza, 8.

⁶ G. Isaev, ‘Russkaia literatura kontsa 1980-h – pervoi poloviny 1990-h godov’, in V.N. Gvozdei, M.I. Zviagina, G.G. Isaev et al (eds.), Sovremennaia russkaia literatura (1985–1995), (s.l.: Astrakhan, 1995), 13.

⁷ Skoropanova, Russkaia, 74.

⁸ M. Lipovetsky, ‘Chto takoe postmodernizm?’ (What Is Postmodernism?), Colta.ru, May 5 (2012).

⁹ A. Nemzer, ‘Kogda? Gde? Kto? (O romane Vladimira Makanina: Opyt kratkogo putevoditelia)’ (When? Where? Who? On Vladimir Makanin’s Novel: The Experience of a Concise Guide), Novyi mir 10 (1998).

¹⁰ Svetlana Perevalova, Proza V. Makanina: traditsiia i evoliutsiia (The Prose of V. Makanin: Tradition and Evolution) (Volgograd: Peremena, 2003).

¹¹ Marina Abasheva, Literatura v poiskakh litsa: Russkaia proza v kontse XX veka: stanovlenie avtorskoi identichnosti, (Perm: Izdatel’stvo Permskogo universiteta, 2001).

¹² Elena Panitkova, Traditsii russkoi klassiki v tvorchestve V.S. Makanina 1980–1990 godov: F.M. Dostoevsky, M.A. Bulgakov, (Unpublished Dissertation, Orel State University, 2004).

¹³ Ksenia Shilina, Poetika romana V. Makanina ‘Underground, ili Geroi nashego vremeni’. Problema geroia, (Unpublished Dissertation, Tyumen State University, 2005).

¹⁴ Elena Dmitrichenko, Proza pozdnego V. Makanina: V kontekste antiutopicheskih tendentsii kontsa XX veka, (Unpublished Dissertation, Herzen State Pedagogical University, 1999).

¹⁵ G.S. Smith, ‘On the Page and on the Snow: Vladimir Makaninʼs “Undergraund, ili Geroi nashego vremeni”’, The Slavonic and East European Review 79 (2001): 434–58.

¹⁶ Evgeniya Kravchenkova, Khudozhestvennyi mir V.S. Makanina: Kontseptsii i interpretatsii, (Unpublished Dissertation, Moscow Pedagogical State University, 2006).

¹⁷ Z. Jianhua, ‘Estetika postsovetskoi russkoi prozy’, Voprosy literatury 4 (2015): 81–99.

¹⁸ V. Khalipov, ‘Postmodernizm v sisteme mirovoi literatury 1980-h godov’, Inostrannaia literatura 1 (1994): 237.

¹⁹ Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 29.

²⁰ M. Lipovetsky, Sovremennaia russkaia literatura: 1950–1990-e gody: v 2 t., (Мoscow: Akademia, 2003), 627.

²¹ M. Lipovetsky, ‘Rastratnye strategii ili Metamorfozy “chernukhi”’, Novyi mir 11 (1999).

²² M. Golubkov identifies three ‘subsystems’, which developed from 1920–1950 in parallel and often in opposition: metropolitan literature (soviet-style), unofficial underground literature (potaionnaia literatura) and literature produced by emigrants and/or the diaspora in general – see M. Golubkov, Russkaia literatura XX veka. Posle raskola, (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2002), 5.

²³ Iulya Matveeva, Russkaia literatura zarubezh’ia: tri volny emigratsii XX veka, (Ekaterinburg: Izdatelʹstvo Uralʹskogo universiteta, 2017), 4.

²⁴ E. Ermolin, ‘Chelovek bez adresa: Roman V. Makanina “Underground, ili Geroi nashego vremeni” kak kniga poslednih slov’, Kontinent 98 (1998): 322.

²⁵ M. Amusin, ‘Ne-iubileinoe. K 70-letiiu Vladimira Makanina’, Zvezda 3 (2007): 192–204.

²⁶ This character has neither a first nor last name. He is known only by the patronymic Petrovich. This form of address indicates low social status, depersonalization, anonymity.

²⁷ All the citations from Makanin’s Underground, or a Hero of Our Time come from the Russian edition of Underground, ili Geroi nashego vremeni (Lib.Ru: Biblioteka Maksima Moshkova).

²⁸ Khrushevka is the popular name for the drab apartment buildings that spread throughout the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. They typically have 3-to-5 stories and are made of concrete or brick.

²⁹ Makanin, Underground.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ B. Firsov, Istoriia sovetskoi sotsiologii: 1950–1980-e gody. Ocherki, 2nd ed. (Saint Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2012), 189–90.

³² Abasheva, Literatura, 59.

³³ Vladimir Makanin, ‘V kontse my s andegraundom razrugalis’’, interview by Lenta.ru (March 13, 2017).

³⁴ Vladimir Makanin, ‘Literatura – kak igra chernymi’, interview by Natalia Aleksiutina, Uchitel’skaia gazeta 51 (2004).

³⁵ Olga Shevchenko, Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 39.

³⁶ Makanin, Underground.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ E. Ermolin, ‘Gorizonty svobody. 90-e gody v russkoi literature – kratkii obzor i otbor’, Kontinent 103 (2000).

³⁹ Boym, Common Places, 125.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 41.

⁴¹ A. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005), 20.

⁴² Dmitrichenko, ‘Proza’.

⁴³ M. Lipovetsky, ‘Svobody chernaia rabota (Ob “artisticheskoi proze” novogo pokoleniia)’, Voprosy literatury 9 (1989): 3–45.

⁴⁴ Viktoria Rataeva, ‘K voprosu o rassmotrenii kategorii tekstovogo vremeni i prostranstva v proizvedenii zhanra antiutopii’, Vestnik magistratury 2 (2013): 29.

⁴⁵ Makanin, Underground.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Ermolin, ‘Gorizonty svobody’.

⁴⁹ Abasheva, Literatura, 59.

⁵⁰ Shevchenko, Crisis, 40.

⁵¹ M. Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, trans. V. Nabokov, D. Nabokov (Woodstock & New York: Ardis Publishers, 2002), 19–20.