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The Russian Peasant Rediscovered: “Village Prose” of the 1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Geoffrey A. Hosking
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The name of Solzhenitsyn so dominated the Soviet literary scene in the 1960s that the ordinary Western reader might be forgiven for supposing that in the writing of fiction he was the lone star in an otherwise featureless sky. This is far from being the case. Solzhenitsyn himself, in a recent interview with Western correspondents, pointed out that there are a number of other writers of major stature at work in Russia today, though understandably he was inhibited from naming any of them.1 In fact, in the return to the moral concern, insight, and compassion which are the great heritage of the nineteenth-century realist novel, Solzhenitsyn has been by no means alone. On the contrary, he is merely primus inter pares among a whole school of writers who have made it their aim to digest and reassess Russia’s apocalyptic recent past, and in the light of it to reflect on man’s moral nature.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 705 - 724
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1973

References

1. New York Times, Apr. 3, 1972.

2. For another interesting approach to this general field see Gleb, Zekulin, “The Contemporary Countryside in Soviet Literature : A Search for New Values,” in Millar, James R., ed., The Soviet Rural Community (Urbana, 1971), p. 376–404.Google Scholar

3. Vladimir Soloukhin's Vladimirskie proselki was first published in Novyi mir, 1957, no. 9, pp. 82-141, and no. 10, pp. 75-134. It is available in an English translation by Miskin, Stella : A Walk in Rural Russia (London, 1966; New York, 1967).Google Scholar

4. However, some writers of the 1920s were ambivalent in their attitude, painting the demise of the traditional village in somber colors. This is particularly true of Leonov, in Barsuki, and of Pilniak, in Golyi god. And throughout the Stalinist period, Prishvin, fascinated by inherited peasant skills and folklore, remained an exception to this as to many other generalizations about Soviet literature. His influence, transmitted through Alexander Iashin, has been considerable on Vasilii Belov and other writers of the northern region.

5. Sidney, Ploss, Conflict and Decision-Making in Soviet Russia : A Case Study of Agricultural Policy, 1953-1963 (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar; Erich, Strauss, Soviet Agriculture in Perspective (London, 1969), chap. 8.Google Scholar

6. These sketches are collected in Valentin Ovechkin, Trudnaio vesna (Moscow, 1956). For a commentary on them, see Gleb, Zekulin, “Aspects of Peasant Life as Portrayed in Contemporary Soviet Literature,” Canadian Slavic Studies, 1, no. 4 (1967) : 555—58Google Scholar. Excerpts and abstracts from Ovechkin's sketches were presented in English in Soviet Studies, 4, no. 4 (1953) : 447-68; 5, no. 3 (1954) : 289-99; 6, no. 1 (1954) : 77-91; 8, no. 3 (1957) : 279-98.

7. Ovechkin, Trudnaia vesna, p. 319.

8. Literaturnaia gaseta, Jan. 31, 1968. Dimitry Pospielovsky, “The ‘Link System' in Soviet Agriculture,” Soviet Studies, 21, no. 4 (1970) : 415, cites “Soviet literary and intellectual defectors” as evidence for the facts of Ovechkin's later life. See also Kasnimye sumasshestvietn, ed. A. Artemov, L. Rar, and M. Slavinsky (Frankfurt am Main, 1971), pp. 184-85.

9. The numbers of Dorosh's Derevenskii dnevnik can be found in Literaturnaia Moskva, 1956, no. 2, pp. 549-626, and in Novyi mir, 1958, no. 7, pp. 3-27; 1961, no. 7, pp. 3-51; 1962, no. 10, pp. 9-46; 1964, no. 6, pp. 11-83; 1965, no. 1, pp. 81-87; 1969, no. 1, pp. 3-41, and no. 2, pp. 6-59; 1970, no. 9, pp. 39-73. His hopes and fears for the future of the Russian village are most succinctly presented in the last number, Novyi mir, 1970, no. 9, esp. pp. 49-56. Dorosh's thought is very rich and many-sided, and it would be impossible to expound it adequately here. I hope to attempt to do so later in a separate article.

10. First published in Oktiabr1, 1956, no. 6, pp. 3-90, and revised for separate publication in 1961. The latter version is available in a useful text, annotated in English by Alfred Dressier (Oxford, 1967). Quotations are from the English edition.

11. Novyi mir, 1961, no. 1, pp. 21-71.

12. See especially Samokhin in Khochu byt’ chestnym, in Novyi mir, 1963, no. 2, pp. 150-86.

13. Novyi mir, 1961, no. 1, p. 67.

14. Novyi mir, 1962, no. 12, pp. 3-26.

15. Novyi mir, 1963, no. 1, pp. 42-63.

16. See especially L. Rzhevsky, “Obraz rasskazchika v povesti Solzhenitsyna ‘Odin den1 Ivana Denisovicha, '” in the author's collection of essays, Prochten'e tvorcheskogo slova (New York, 1970), pp. 237-52; also Vladimir J., Rus, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich : A Point of View Analysis,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 13 (1971) : 165–78.Google Scholar

17. Fedor Abramov, Dve zitny i tri leta, published in Novyi tnir, 1968, nos. 1-3 (republished as a separate book by “Sovetskii pisatel',” Leningrad, 1969); quotations are from the Leningrad edition. Boris Mozhaev, Is zhizni Fedora Kuz'kina, published in Novyi mir, 1966, no. 7. Vasilii Belov, Privychnoe delo, published in Sever, 1966, no. 1 (republished, somewhat revised, in Za tremia volokami (Moscow : “Sovetskii pisatel1, “ 1968), and in Sel'skie povesti by the Komsomol publishing house, Molodaia Gvardiia (Moscow, 1971).

18. Since writing Privychnoe delo, Belov has developed further his mastery of the Vologda peasant language through pastiches on folk tales, told in the local dialect. See especially Bukhtiny vologodskie, in Novyi tnir, 1969, no. 8, pp. 158-84, and “Sluchainye etiudy,” Nash sovremennik, 1971, no. 7, pp. 95-102.

19. Literaturnaia gaseta, Nov. 22, 1967, p. 4. It is interesting that Kamianov specifically excepts Ivan Afrikanovich from this criticism. Ivan Afrikanovich, perhaps because of Belov's literary skill, seems to have disarmed all the critics, though they may debate what his significance is.

20. Literaturnaia gaseta, Jan. 31, 1968, p. 5. He specifically quotes Ivan Afrikanovich as an example.

21. Literaturnaia gazeta, Jan. 17, 1968, p. 6. 22. Literaturnaia gazeta, Feb. 28, 1968, p. 6. Another aspect of “village prose” which has delighted some critics and alarmed others is its potential espousal of the cause of old Russia. A whole school of writers in the journal Molodaia gvardiia, headed by Viktor Chalmaev, took the opportunity to rehabilitate the “Russian soul” and to glorify a variety of aspects of prerevolutionary Russian society and culture. I. Dedkov and A. Dement'ev, in Novyi mir, took up the defense of Soviet orthodoxy, Dedkov maintaining that the ideals of “village prose” were general human ones, and not specifically Russian. See V. Chalmaev, “Neizbezhnost1,” Molodaia gvardiia, 1968, no. 9, pp. 259-89; I. Dedkov, “Stranitsy derevenskoi zhizni,” Novyi mir, 1969, no. 3, pp. 231-46; A. Dement'ev, “O traditsiiakh i narodnosti,” Novyi mir, 1969, no. 4, pp. 215-35; V. N. Pavlov, “Spory o slavianofil'stve i russkom patriotizme v sovetskoi nauchnoi literature, 1967-70 gg.,” Grani, no. 82 (1971), pp. 183-211.

23. Max, Hayward, “The Decline of Socialist Realism,” Survey, 18, no. 1 (Winter 1972) : 73–97, esp. pp. 93-94.Google Scholar

24. It should be emphasized that these are not by any means the only authors working in the genre of “village prose,” and animated by the concerns I have expounded in this article. Some other fine examples are : S. P. Zalygin, Na Irtyshe, in Novyi mir, 1964, no. 2, pp. 3-80 (which concerns the way collectivization broke up the old village commune). V. F. Tendriakov, Podenka—vek korotkii, in Novyi mir, 1965, no. S, pp. 95-141, and also Konchina, in Moskva, 1968, no. 3, pp. 3-138. N. Voronov, Iunost1 v ZheleznodoVske, in Novyi mir, 1968, no. 11, pp. 3-95, and no. 12, pp. 31-110 (which is concerned with the life of peasants who move into the new industrial towns of the First Five-Year Plan). V. Shukshin, “Iz detstva Ivana Popova,” Novyi mir, 1968, no. 11, pp. 98-110. V. Voinovich, Zhizn’ i neobychainye prikliucheniia soldata Ivana Chonkina, in Grani, no. 72 (1969), pp. 3-83. Even these works are only the tip of an iceberg, not all of which, however, is of such good literary quality. An excellent samisdat novel which takes the insights of “village prose” and applies them in a wider field is Vladimir, Maximov, Sem' dnei tvoreniia (Frankfurt am Main, 1972)Google Scholar : here the family, and the redemption of a sick society through the family, is the main theme. For further examples see my “Selected Bibliography of Recent Village Prose in the Soviet Union,” ABSEES, 4, no. 2 (October 1973), Special Section.

25. See Richard, Wortman, The Crisis of Russian Populism (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

26. For an account of the application of the Brezhnev-Kosygin reforms, see Alec, Nove, “Soviet Agriculture Under Brezhnev,” Slavic Review, 29, no. 3 (1970) : 379–410Google Scholar. For an interesting Soviet impression of the wealthier but also less cohesive village community of the early 1970s see Leonid Ivanov, “V Rodnom Kraiu,” Neva, 1972, no. 6, pp. 118-36. I suspect that the writers of “village prose” have tended to depict the village not as it was at the time of writing, but as it used to be somewhat earlier, say just after the Second World War. It is possible that because of their cultural concerns they have overemphasized both the backwardness and the communal cohesion of the peasant village. Compare most of the writings mentioned in this article with Amal'rik's, Andrei Neshelannoe puteshestvie v Sibil-” (New York, 1970)Google Scholar, written at the same time : on pp. 163-75 he gives a bleak view of the Soviet peasantry, demoralized and devoid of any communal spirit. The book has been translated into English by Manya Harari and Hayward, Max : Involuntary Journey to Siberia (New York, 1970).Google Scholar