The Birch

Russia Reacts to News of Chechen Violence in Boston

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0400

Russia Reacts to News of Chechen Violence in Boston:

Are the Tsarnaevs “ours” or not, and exactly how responsible should Russia feel for producing them or their brand of violence? “Forgive us, Americans, for having fostered here and sent to you these evident terrorists,” wrote Vladimir Varfolomeev, of the radio station Echo of Moscow, as soon as the news broke. This sentiment is not about the Tsarnaevs at all, who, after all, moved to the U.S. in early childhood. It’s about Chechnya.

Resurrecting Pushkin

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:50 -0400

The Birch’s annual publication is currently in production!

The issue will contain the Birch’s signature mix of literary criticism, politics, creative writing and translations, all submitted from undergraduate students across the country, and all relating to things Eastern European.

While we wait for the issue’s release, here’s a piece of creative writing. “Resurrecting Pushkin” speaks, I think, for itself.

Resurrecting Pushkin

By the Pushed Kid

Dare I practice what I preach? If words scratch the page with a screech, does the scribe question who speaks?

Caution

Sometimes we hurt ourselves even more when we don’t fall.

Thesis

The hung cage’s martyr whispers to the presented crowd a prayer to those few that will experience the same trial.

The Institution

I was hung too. Before my eyes dawned I watched the sallow sun set. I had been released from the worldly scenes when I accepted my crown.

Bang

The sharpest tear falls before silence ceases. The pressing sin from before soils a filthy rag. Pennied eyes prepare for the invitation of death. The unbalanced scale dangles from weighted chains, possessing the inner spirits of lost time. I cry inside, weeping at an overfilled cup that drips oil down the canals of my face.

The Living Notebook

In the pages of my notebook there is a bench where I have spent many of seasons hard breathing and weeping, picking the scabs where nails have engraved the scriptures of a Samaritans wage. What seeps, lines of cerise drawn to keep crusted memories on the bars of the primrose wallpaper.

Levitating

It is a whirlwind spinning on an Axis. Axes scathe at the roots of my tree. Can’t they see that I bleed?

Falling

I walked the straight and narrow. Still got demons the size of my ego. Bitter suspense got me cleaning out my closet suspecting others might unlock it. I keep the keys in my pocket, my heart in a locket. The electrical surge comes from a fork in a socket. The sparks are flying but my wings got fried. This is the sudden affect of falling out the sky.

Requiem

I lived through the hyphen. Dancing to the polyphonic tune, claws of pizzicato remind me of the adagio blues. The clues are wound in the spring. And once the last note falls, to know the end was the entrance to the clouds, I had listened with belief.

Just Not Made for This World

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:01:07 -0400

The Birch’s annual issue will be coming out any day now!

Each year, the Birch publishes a journal issue, with articles covering current events, literary criticism, creative writing and translation, all relating to Slavic and Eastern European studies.

As we all wait with bated breath for this year’s issue, here’s a small appetizer: a submission from Dylan Hillerbrand, entitled “Just Not Made for This World”. The essay discusses the fates of characters in Anna Karenina and the perhaps deterministic nature of Tolstoy’s philosophy.

Just Not Made for This World: Preordained Happiness in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

By Dylan Hillerbrand

At the very end of Chapter 9 of Part 8 of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, we learn just how close the novel was to ending with two suicides rather than one. Here, Konstantin Levin admits to having to hide rope and stay clear of guns in order to keep himself from taking his own life. Luckily, Levin is able to break out of his suicidal depression, and while the source of his unhappiness is clear, so too is his path to recovery: “When Levin thought about what he was and what he lived for, he found no answer and fell into despair; but when he stopped asking himself about it, he seemed to know what he was and what he lived for, because he acted and lived firmly and definitely.”^¹ That this decision on the part of Levin to live unambiguously according to his natural tendencies and innate morals works out to Levin’s tremendous benefit when compared to the rest of the characters suggests that this “firm” and “definite” path to well-being is Tolstoy’s preferred one.

This preferred mode of behavior, however, is certainly more complicated than simply living definitively according to the character of one’s soul. After all, there are characters in the novel who display an innate tendency towards a more destructive, though still “firmly and definitely” enacted, lifestyle. Levin’s brother Nikolai and his brother-in-law Stepan Arkadyich both have characters and urges that end up leading them from the responsible path that Levin himself follows. But while Stepan at least achieves physical contentment, Nikolai lives angrily and dies fearfully. What is the significant difference between these men, the reason why they do not share Levin’s fate, when they live in the same assured manner? Not morals, as Stepan’s success clearly shows. Rather, the differences between these characters are their endowed tendencies, the natures within themselves that they cannot control. Here is the presence of the divine, in the fact that, despite his best efforts, Nikolai is not made to fit correctly into the world as it is. Levin and Stepan, on the other hand, were made with the correct characteristics. This helplessness to change means that the ability of the characters to achieve happiness is contingent on factors outside of their reach, and that Levin’s approach to happiness cannot be universal. Given this, Anna’s own fate results from the fact that she, like Nikolai, was not made for this world. Her affair with Vronsky is significant cause for her decline, but when comparing Anna to Stepan and Vronsky’s mother, whose own infidelities are not nearly so disruptive, it becomes clear that factors within Anna herself are decisively at play.

Stepan Arkadyich, despite an almost completely different outlook and sense of familial and social responsibility than Levin, does not suffer much for his lack of character, love, or respect towards his wife and children. He cheats, and he suffers no significant consequences. He runs up massive debts, and continues to do so throughout the novel with impunity. When Stepan does attempt to settle these debts, he does so through no sacrifice of his own; he either sells part of his wife’s estate, or shamelessly schmoozes for a cushy, seemingly ineffective position in the railroad company. Stepan is, after all, the very model of an “hónest” man, a designation that “signifies not only that the man or institution is not dishonest, but that they are capable on occasion of sticking a pin into the government.”^² In other words, Stepan is not a bad man, just one that is willing to take advantage of situations, even if doing so is corrupt and dishonorable. Unlike Levin, who spends his time trying to manage his estate more efficiently for the common good, Stepan is not about to forgo personal benefit simply on account of a principle. Thus, Stepan lives and acts “firmly” on the basis of an amiable, but self-indulgent and frivolous, nature. And for that, he seems to be rewarded: he continues to live this way with relative impunity. Stepan serves as support to Levin’s finding that the good life is lived according to the dictates of one’s soul, though it hardly seems that Levin would approve of Stepan’s way of life.

Then, there is the life and death of Konstantin Levin’s brother, Nikolai Levin. Nikolai is a man, good at heart, who nonetheless has succumbed to internal temptation. Levin recalls how Nikolai would, for a period of time, be the very model of abstention, staying away from all sorts of temptations of the flesh, until a point when “it was as if something broke loose in him,” and he would reject his previous monastic lifestyle for one of hedonism and debauchery.^³ And yet the reader cannot doubt Nikolai’s earnestness or inner worth as Levin remarks that despite Nikolai’s antisocial behavior, “it seemed [to Levin] by no means as vile as it might have seemed to those who did not know Nikolai Levin, did not know his whole story, did not know his heart.”^⁴ Konstantin Levin can look past Nikolai’s licentious behavior and see a good person beneath, maintaining that Nikolai “is not to blame for having been born with an irrepressible character and a mind somehow constrained.”^⁵

Nikolai’s “vile” life is not the result of the same sort of philosophical questioning that plagues and disturbs Levin. For Nikolai to live “firmly and definitely” as a doer rather than a questioner means to live in this unrestrained way. Despite this fact, Nikolai is unhappy. That he lives with a former prostitute, beats his military superior and a pupil, and gets arrested for disorderly conduct all without second-guessing his purposes does not leave him with an internally peaceful life, like such self-assuredness does for Konstantin. It turns out that Nikolai’s political and social ideas are “only an anchor saving him from despising himself.”^⁶ His contrarian lifestyle provides only the most tenuous foundation for mental health. The fact that, due to the way he was born, Nikolai is unable to achieve a fulfilled, acceptable life complicates what would otherwise be Levin’s simple model for a spiritually satisfied existence. Living according to one’s internal compass is not a simple proposition that leads to universal, favorable outcomes, but the expression of individual, immutable faults and wills. That the remainder of Nikolai’s appearances in the novel lead inexorably to his own death only intensifies this unfortunate reality. Nikolai and Konstantin both know that Nikolai is in the process of dying – they have this certainty – and yet rather than this clarity being a liberating force, this knowledge suppresses any possibility of Nikolai living the rest of his life in fruitful relationship with his brother. Levin’s last chance for meaningful relationship with his brother goes by when neither he nor Nikolai can speak “from the heart” about the fact that Nikolai is dying.^⁷

The cause given by Tolstoy for Nikolai’s behavior is very general and gives little indication as to the practical manifestations of this causation. Near Nikolai’s deathbed, Kitty tells her husband that “I do feel that I would have been friends with [Nikolai],” to which Levin replies, “Yes, would have been. […] He’s precisely one of those people of whom they say that they’re not meant for this world.”^⁸ Despite Levin’s discovery that the secret to living well in this world is to live according to the dictates of the soul, not all souls conform to the necessities of this world. Thus, while Levin and Stepan’s happiness in their lives is the result of living “firmly,” Nikolai does not even have that option. The tension that plays out between Nikolai’s internal nature and the workings of Russian society, and the way this tension leads to his demise, is a prototype for Anna’s progression over the course of the novel. Anna finds herself in a similar situation to Nikolai, where her soul, especially reflected in her desire for passionate love, leads her to commit actions that provoke ostracism, doubt, and jealousy because her needs cannot be met, or even understood by the people around her. The narrative of tension between the dictates of the soul, the way individual characters were made, and the necessities of Russian society and the actions of others, is prevalent in more than Nikolai’s experiences, extending to the larger subplot involving Anna.

Because Anna’s discovery over the course of the novel is that she is not meant for this world. This is evident in the way that, by the end of the novel, Anna feels alienated from all sides—from her husband, her lover, Russian aristocratic society, and even from her child. Much earlier, after Anna tells her husband, Alexei, of her past indiscretion, he informs Anna that he is willing to forget the past, keep her as his wife and Seryozha as his son, as long as she maintains the appearances of propriety and is active in “eradicating the cause of our discord.”^⁹ But Anna is not happy or grateful when she receives what, according to the rest of Russian society, would be considered extremely magnanimous terms of reconciliation. Instead, she recognizes that while her actions might not be comprehendible to others, she nevertheless cannot be held to the standard of conduct that the world expects from her. The rest of the world doesn’t know that Alexei “has been stifling my life for eight years, stifling everything that was alive in me.”^¹⁰ “But the time has come,” she thinks, “I’ve realized…that I am alive, that I am not to blame if God has made me so that I must love and live.”^¹¹ Anna cannot, in the exact sense of that word, live in accordance to Alexei’s offer, because, she realizes that “she would never experience the freedom of love.”^¹² In some ways, Anna is more made for this world than Nikolai is, in that she has much more successfully navigated aristocratic Russia than Nikolai did. She is the wife of a well-off government employee, and is a welcomed part of St. Petersburg society. But over the course of the novel, she discovers that, for whatever reason, she is someone different, that she can no longer expect to live the same life as her Moscow peers.

One way that Tolstoy gets at this internal difference of Anna’s is how she is portrayed in her portrait. When Levin meets Anna in person for the only time in the novel, he is enchanted by her picture. The woman in the painting is more “beautiful than a living woman can be.”^¹³ Then he sees Anna in person, who is “less dazzling in reality,” but finds that “in the living woman there [is] some new attractiveness that was not in the portrait.”^¹⁴ Anna’s portrait displays the truth of her nature. Earlier, when the narrative first turns to Mikhailov the painter, Tolstoy describes the process of painting as the process of uncovering an unadulterated idea or form: “It was as if [Mikhailov] removed the wrappings that kept it from being fully seen. Each new stroke only revealed more of the whole figure in all its energetic force.”^¹⁵ Mikhailov paints those things that “no one had ever conveyed before.”^¹⁶ Mikhailov’s paintings convey ideas that are not part of this world, that are not ordinary, but break through the boundaries of the world. The portrait of Anna displays Anna’s “sweetest inner expression” that not even Vronsky can detect without the portrait’s aid.^¹⁷ That the person with whom Anna is most vulnerable, that the person on whom Anna so depends, is able to discover something new from this painted portrait says something both about the way this portrait contains some part of her that cannot be seen by others. The painting, then, reveals the part of Anna that most of society does not see, the part of her that is unlike other women, the part that makes it impossible for Anna to follow the worldly paths of the novels other adulterers.

Part of what makes that alienation from the way the world is supposed to work so potent is the fact that no one can recognize a reason for it. No one, including Anna herself can articulate the cause of her feelings. Here again, the painting crystallizes that difference. After Mikhailov paints Anna’s portrait, Vronsky sees no reason to continue his own work in the same vein. He determines that the painting of Anna is “superfluous.”^¹⁸ But Vronsky does continue painting, and he and Anna admire his art because they “looked much more like famous pictures than Mikhailov’s did.”^¹⁹ Vronsky paints the way others have painted. He does not break new ground, and unlike Mikhailov does not try to evoke those things that no one else has ever expressed. Thus, the paintings that are celebrated by the Russian elite, those by the “inimitable old masters,” do not express the unexpressed for Russian society. They, like Vronsky, only see what has already been expressed, what has already been celebrated; therefore, what is expressed in Anna’s portrait by Mikhailov is something about Anna that could not be seen in one of Vronsky’s imitative paintings. Tolstoy does not define what this extra-normal characteristic that the portrait displays exactly is, but it is clear that something is different about Anna, that there is some part of her that is not made for this world, some part of her that makes it so that she is indeed telling the truth when she cannot possibly live any other way than the scandalous way that she does.

In this, Tolstoy acknowledges his own lack of knowledge about how one ought to live. Yes, following the innate, unselfconscious internal map given to each person is a way towards happiness, but following that way does not entitle him or her to that happiness. And this is reflected in the novel’s epigraph: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” Whether or not Nikolai or Anna’s tortured end is justifiable “vengeance” for anything he or she did in real life, whether or not their deaths even represent the judgment of their life on earth, their deaths show that even Tolstoy cannot fully show what causes or prevents a person’s suffering as a result of God’s vengeance. Perhaps it is fate, perhaps it is luck, or perhaps it is the result of a complex calculus of thoughts, creeds, words, and actions. It is possible Levin’s path to happiness is generalizable, but if so, it is only a hypothesis.

Footnotes:

1Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004, p. 789.

2Tolstoy, p. 720.

3Tolstoy, p. 84.

4Tolstoy, p. 85.

5Tolstoy, p. 85.

6Tolstoy, p. 88.

7Tolstoy, p. 349.

8Tolstoy, p. 498.

9Tolstoy, p. 284.

10Tolstoy, p. 292.

11Tolstoy, p. 292.

12Tolstoy, p. 293.

13Tolstoy, p. 696.

14Tolstoy, p. 697.

15Tolstoy, p. 470.

16Tolstoy, p. 470.

17Tolstoy, p. 476.

18Tolstoy, p. 476.

19Tolstoy, p. 478.

Oblivion in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:00:56 -0400

The Birch’s 2012-13 issue will be off to the printers this weekend!

Each year, the Birch publishes a journal containing work from undergraduates across the country, including work on politics, creative writing, literary criticism, photography, cultural essays, and translation, all relating to Slavic and Eastern European studies.

You’ll be able to catch a copy of the journal on our website, and hard copies will also be available at Eastern European departments in colleges across the country.

As a taste of what’s to come, here’s a submission from Peter Marzalik, “Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: Living in Oblivion.” The essay examines Tolstoy’s use of the word “oblivion” in Anna Karenina, examining the word’s influence on various characters, and its implications for Tolstoy’s own philosophy.

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: Living in Oblivion

By Peter Marzalik

Throughout Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the word oblivion (забыться) appears in a variety of contexts. Tolstoy chiefly utilized the repetition of this word to connect the actions and thoughts of particular characters, especially Stiva and Levin. Their friendship provides a testing ground for Tolstoy’s hypotheses. The adulterer and the hero – two personas that seem diametrically opposed – actually embody the mental struggle Tolstoy embarked upon to formulate his religious philosophy. By juxtaposing the forms of oblivion of Stiva and Levin, Tolstoy emphasizes that living in the spiritual oblivion of God should be the driving force of a person’s life.

Tolstoy introduces this concept of oblivion during the opening scenes with Stiva: “one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious…to become oblivious in the dream of life”¹ (надо жить потребностями дня, то-есть забыться…надо забыться сномъ жизни)². Such an aphoristic statement originates from Stiva’s dream near the beginning of the novel:

‘Yes, yes, how did it go?’ he thought, recalling his dream. ‘How did it go? Yes! Alabin was giving a dinner in Darmstadt—no, not in Darmstadt but something American. Yes, but this Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, yes—and the tables were singing Il mio tesoro, only it wasn’t Il mio tesoro but something better, and there were some little carafes, which were also women,’ he recalled.³

In his article “Some Observations on Stiva’s Dream,” James Rice provides solid insight into the meaning of this sleep sequence. Each element of the dream is interconnected and bears symbolic significance. Tolstoy used the surname “Alabin” for Stiva in his first draft before “Oblonsky,” suggesting this dream Alabin may be Stiva’s alter ego.⁴ Further linguistic analysis adds credence to this claim. A phonetic examination reveals Alabin and Oblonsky share anagrammatic traits – aLaBiN>aBLoN-skii.⁵ Interestingly, the roots of the names also prove important. Alabin derives from the Latin word albus meaning white and Oblonsky from the Russian words болонка, блин meaning lapdog and pancake.⁶ This conjures up images of purity in distinct contrast with foolhardiness. Rice explains that Stiva’s dream represents “a wish for unencumbered security from the importunings of conventional virtue and conjugal duty.”⁷ Ultimately, Stiva desires adultery without consequences. He wants a flight of fantasy to a far off German city, Darmstadt, or even to America.

According to Freud, tables in dreams often represent femininity. In Stiva’s dream, their glass makeup readily connects to the carafes, who transform into women.⁸ These symbols embody Stiva’s sexual appetites expressed through items used for the serving and consumption of food and drink. Despite the cheeriness and wonder, the threat of accountability still permeates this dream through the music. Don Ottavio sings Il mio tesoro in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, vowing vengeance against Don Giovanni for loving his fiancée. Such a somber motif provides the backdrop for these absurd festivities. This dream sequence shows with regard to Stiva that “his belief that he isn’t to blame implies a defect in his sense of reality.”⁹ Tolstoy insinuates quite early that Stiva does not wish to take responsibility for his actions, but to simply “live for the needs of the day”¹⁰ in pleasure-seeking oblivion.

Stiva’s philosophy first presents itself in concert with Levin when he and Stiva are dining at a fancy restaurant. Throughout the meal, Stiva dominates both the environment and the conversation. He procures the best wine and cheese, and reacts joyfully with “moist and shining eyes”¹¹ to the tasty oysters. Such obsession with material delicacies defines his code of living, which he expresses to Levin as “the aim of civilization: to make everything an enjoyment.”¹² Throughout the novel, Stiva determinedly arranges for the best food and drink in every situation, most notably at the dinner party, where he organizes “a set with six kinds of vodka and as many kinds of cheese.”¹³ Tolstoy masterfully crafts food metaphors to cover the range of physical pleasures underlying Stiva’s oblivion. He describes Stiva’s ability to promote delightful conversation as having “kneaded the social dough.”¹⁴ Stiva further equates his love affair to a fragrant “sweet roll”¹⁵ in this very dinner conversation with Levin, solidifying the relationship between food and sexuality.

Traditionally, Tolstoy tends to treat food functionally “as a measure of an individual’s integrity or attachment to life or as an image for an aspect of human experience.”¹⁶ As an advocate of vegetarianism and strenuous toil, Tolstoy heartily despises all that Stiva represents¹⁷. However, such mighty disdain does not mean he never succumbed to such desires, especially after considering his venturesome adolescence. In “A Confession”, Tolstoy admits the follies of his youth and explains that the second method of escape from religious consciousness is epicureanism, simply enjoying the blessings of life without worrying.¹⁸ Another nonfictional work also shows his scrutiny of Stiva’s way of living. Tolstoy describes in his essay “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?” exactly how Stiva exists obliviously: “hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before.”¹⁹ Stiva stupefies himself with the pursuit of earthly pleasure in order to avoid taking responsibility for his actions.

Tolstoy mentions Levin’s uneasiness with Stiva’s gluttony multiple times throughout the dinner. After his seemingly successful encounter with Kitty, Levin thinks how “it was all offensive to him. He was afraid to soil what was overflowing in his soul.”²⁰ This is consistent with what he describes is his “chief concern of life, on which all happiness depended”²¹: having a family. Stiva finds happiness through much baser means. Levin also views the food, Stiva’s pride and joy, as inconsequential, even admitting he would prefer the simple country food of shchi and kasha or white bread and cheese.²²

It is quite significant that Tolstoy includes how “Oblonsky felt relieved and rested after talking with Levin, who always caused him too much mental and spiritual strain.”²³ This tension follows a philosophical conversation about love, stemming from Stiva’s marital issues. Levin tries to speak confidently on the purity of love and family life, but is burnt like usual in the furnace of doubt from his past transgressions. Stiva pounces on this weakness, explaining “all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”²⁴ This implication that good and evil exist in all, leaving the answer to what actually is moral quite ambiguous, creates an “extreme estrangement”²⁵ between Levin and Stiva. Resolving this enigma makes up part of Tolstoy’s mental struggle for religious understanding. It seems fair to assume he looks more poorly on Stiva’s point of view; however, the uncertainty still remains, especially while writing this novel. Though the ambiguity exists, Tolstoy clearly presents a contrasting form of oblivion through Levin in later scenes of the book that embody the ideal self Tolstoy is crafting in his philosophy.

Tolstoy first offers Levin’s form of oblivion when he is working with the peasants in the fields: “The longer Levin mowed, the more often he felt those moments of oblivion…”²⁶ (Чем долго Левин косил, тем чаще и чаще он чувствовал минуты забытья…).²⁷ Tolstoy uses a noun instead of the reflexive verb from before, but both have the same root, забыть, which renders the same translation, oblivion. However, in Levin’s case, the meaning aligns readily with the traditional dictionary definition of oblivion: the state of being unaware or unconscious of what is happening.²⁸ Levin notices how “his whole body, full of life and conscious of itself, and, as if by magic, without a thought of it, the work got rightly and neatly done on its own.”²⁹ This state of oblivion, this “external force”³⁰ allowed him to lose all awareness of time and complete his work nearly unconsciously. Tolstoy brilliantly parallels Stiva’s earth bound pleasures of physical appetite to Levin’s actual toiling of the earth as he describes how this passion of labor invoked such “enormous pleasure.”³¹ Interestingly, this passion of labor connects to another scene where Tolstoy expresses oblivion with Levin.

When Kitty is in the throes of childbirth or as repeated before, the passion of labor, Levin undergoes another episode of “momentary oblivion.”³² This was brought on by when “he prayed to God without ceasing”³³, imploring God to keep Kitty safe. Such an association begins to establish the spiritual quality of Levin’s form of oblivion. Furthermore, he deduces that all “ordinary circumstances of life,” the needs of the day championed by Stiva, “ceased to exist.”³⁴ Such a realization shows a clear juxtaposition between Stiva’s material desires and Levin’s holier aspirations. Notably, it is Kitty’s cry that actually breaks this “momentary oblivion”³⁵ of Levin, who then rushes to her bedside in order to “vindicate himself.”³⁶ At this point in the story, Levin is still internally struggling to find his own moral code, which is why he is both blessed and cursed with feelings of calm and torment.³⁷ Eventually, Levin had become completely “oblivious” and “had entirely forgotten what was going on.”³⁸ Tolstoy includes this state of oblivion for Levin during Kitty’s labor to establish the religiosity creeping into Levin’s mental turmoil over trying to comprehend life.

In his book Leo Tolstoy Resident and Stranger: A Study in Fiction and Theology, Richard Gustafson presents a compelling argument that further accentuates the diametric opposition between Stiva and Levin; however, his definitions prove too monolithic in describing the forms of oblivion that represent Tolstoy’s moral struggle. Gustafson begins quite aptly, describing Tolstoy’s methods such as “all [his] works embody and reveal the way to love.”³⁹ He continues by explaining how Tolstoy’s characters embark on a quest for love in the search of a solution for life.⁴⁰ However, further discussion on characterization reveals the limitations for the theory of emblematic realism. Gutsafson claims that “most figures in Tolstoy are not fluid and full; they are fixed and flat.”⁴¹ Stiva is emblematic of a “man of the flesh” and Levin as “man of the spirit.”⁴² He explains that Levin suffers from the “mind of the master”⁴³, which involves being hindered by rationality before transforming into a new self, driven by true faith. This terminology aligns quite readily with the characterization of Stiva and Levin, but it ignores the nuance that Tolstoy includes in their actions throughout the novel.

On multiple occasions, Tolstoy blurs the allegorical line that Gustafson tries to erect between Stiva and Levin. Levin lives in Stiva’s state of oblivion in certain moments and vice versa. The combination of two seemingly diametric forces captures the suffering in Tolstoy’s moral conversion and shows the brilliance of Tolstoy’s art form. When Levin meets Stiva at the club, Tolstoy creates a setting of fantasy and wonder quite similar to Stiva’s dream. It presents itself in the form of the temptation of societal order that Levin ultimately succumbs to willingly. On entering the club, Levin once again appreciates the “impression of restfulness, contentment and propriety.”⁴⁴ He notices “not a single angry or worried face,” but simply people set on enjoying the “material blessings of life at their leisure.”⁴⁵ This is the epicurean stupor that defines Stiva’s form of oblivion. Levin admits that “after so many strained intellectual conversations”⁴⁶he enjoys the simple company and rich fare. The oblivion that Stiva champions even brings Levin and Vronsky together amiably. Tolstoy has this “temple of idleness”⁴⁷ be a generally positive experience for his hero; however, he includes a word of warning when the prince talks of the “sloshers”⁴⁸: those who become idle from material pleasures. This scene is significant because it shows Tolstoy’s moral development. At this point in his life, Tolstoy remains undecided on how much societal order should be included in the life of a man trying to live morally. The similar ambiance between Stiva’s dream and this gentleman’s club along with the reference to becoming idle suggest Tolstoy was becoming more and more disillusioned with society.

Tolstoy also uses Levin in a parallel to Stiva’s state of oblivion after Kitty agrees to marry Levin. Levin reflects that he “had lived completely unconsciously and had felt himself completely removed from the conditions of material life.”⁴⁹ This appears in alignment with Levin’s more spiritual form of oblivion, but how he interacts with others following the proposal is reminiscent of Stiva’s mission to make everything enjoyable for everyone. Levin ceases to be judgmental, unable to “recall what had displeased him”⁵⁰ in his earlier relations with these people and concludes “they were all such kind, nice people and things all went so nicely and sweetly among them.”⁵¹ Interestingly, this feeling of unity, an ideal that Tolstoy champions in his philosophy, emanates more often through the “natural kindness”⁵² of Stiva, who always leaves “an amiable and cheerful impression on the people he [meets].”⁵³ It is important to note the source of this joyfulness: Stiva is “on familiar terms with everyone with whom he drank champagne,”⁵⁴; thus, an artifice of brotherhood is built on a stupefying substance. Contrastingly, people are “infected by Levin’s rapture”⁵⁵ because of the love and happiness pouring from his soul. Though the effect appears the same, the cause makes all the difference.

Tolstoy ultimately mixes the categorically contrasting oblivions of Stiva and Levin to reveal the path to acquiring religious consciousness. The actions of both characters embody different ways of living: escaping in a stupor of earthly pleasures and enduring the mental turmoil to find the truth. How realistically Tolstoy allows his hero with whom the reader hopefully relates to waver along the spectrum. Tolstoy so aptly accomplishes this feat because he understands such uncertainty from his own real life experiences. Tolstoy underwent a deviant adolescence like Levin and enjoyed societal pleasures like Stiva. He shares the perception of the matrimonial noose with Stiva, who solves such concerns with philandering.⁵⁶ Tolstoy eventually wishes to alleviate these worries in the opposite way. He believes a true Christian should live as a wanderer or a vagabond in order to provide for all his brothers and sisters, his utopian family.⁵⁷ However, the responsibility to his personal family keeps him committed until the last few days of his life when he takes a pilgrimage of sorts with his doctor.⁵⁸ Even then he is too famous to avoid detection; death is the only way of escape. Amidst the writing of this novel, devotion to personal family is an ideal Tolstoy champions through Levin. Levin’s surprise at the ordinary troubles of married life likely relates to Tolstoy’s trials and tribulations with his wife as well. Levin’s fantasy of a happy family cracks as “confrontations occurred for such incomprehensibly insignificant reasons.”⁵⁹ Through the actions of Stiva and Levin, Tolstoy describes his own mental struggle for religious understanding, allowing for the discovery of a satisfactory version of truth that establishes his philosophy.

Tolstoy ends his novel with Levin’s discovery of this spiritual state of oblivion. A simple conversation with a peasant leads to the realization that a good person “lives for the soul”⁶⁰or if permissible to say, the oblivion of God. This “external force”⁶¹ present in both Levin’s work and his wife’s childbirth is a higher power that drives his life without his awareness of what is happening, making him oblivious. Such a claim is consistent with Levin’s breakthrough that his life is better, almost happy, “when he did not think, but lived.”⁶² One must champion faith over reason, an earth-bound, man-made action, in order to enter the oblivion of God. Tolstoy carries the relationship between faith and reason further in his later nonfiction works, such as in “A Confession”. He explains how the truth seeking man “if he does understand the illusion of the finite, he is bound to believe in the infinite.”⁶³ Reason reconciles the finite with the infinite, allowing for faith. Rational thought serves as an adequate tool to recognize the limitations of the earthly realm. Such a conclusion calls for living in a spiritual, infinite oblivion to realize happiness.

Tolstoy certainly has Levin become more enlightened at the end, but it is important to note that Levin knows this new feeling has not changed him or made him happier.⁶⁴However, he is able to recognize the “unquestionable meaning of the good”⁶⁵ in this new feeling lodged in his soul. Such a resolution suggests that Tolstoy believes Levin is on the right path to finding a truly happy, purposeful life. Considering this was the last fictional work Tolstoy wrote before embarking on his religious transformation, this is a sensible ending for Anna Karenina.

Endnotes

¹ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 4.

² Комаров, Алексей. Анна Каренина: Часть первая. Интернет Библиотека. 2012. http://ilibrary.ru/text/1099/p.2/index.html

³ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 1-2.

⁴ Rice, James. “Some Observations on Stiva’s Dream.” Tolstoy Studies Journal VIII, 1995-96, 118.

⁵Ibid, 119.

⁶ Ibid, 121.

⁷ Ibid, 120.

⁸Ibid.

⁹ Justman, Stewart. “Stiva’s Idiotic Grin.” Project Muse 33:2, 2009, 428. http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v033/33.2.justman.html

¹⁰ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 4.

¹¹ Ibid, 35.

¹²Ibid, 36.

¹³ Ibid, 383.

¹⁴ Ibid, 381.

¹⁵ Ibid, 40.

¹⁶ Goscilo, Helena. “Tolstoyan Fare: Credo a la Carte.” Slavonic and East European Review 62:4, 1984, 481. http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/sici?sici=0037-6795%28198410%2962%3A4%3C481%3ATFCALC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6&origin=oclc;oclc;worldcat.org&&

¹⁷ Ibid, 482.

¹⁸ Tolstoy, Leo. A Confession (1884). London: Penguin Group, 1987, 45.

¹⁹ Tolstoy, Leo. “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?” (1890). Leo Tolstoy: Selected Essays. New York: The Modern Library, 1964, 187.

²⁰ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 35.

²¹ Ibid, 95.

²² Ibid, 34-35.

²³ Ibid, 42.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Ibid, 252.

²⁷ Комаров, Алексей. Анна Каренина: Часть третья. Интернет Библиотека. 2012. http://ilibrary.ru/text/1099/p.74/index.html

²⁸ “Oblivion.” Def. 1a. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2012. Web.

²⁹ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 252.

³⁰ Ibid, 256.

³¹ Ibid, 251.

³² Ibid, 713

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Ibid, 712.

³⁵ Ibid, 713

³⁶ Ibid, 714.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Gustafson, Richard F. Leo Tolstoy Resident and Stranger: A Study in Fiction and Theology. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986, 208.

⁴⁰ Ibid, 207.

⁴¹ Ibid, 209.

⁴²Ibid.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 689.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Ibid, 692.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid, 402.

⁵⁰ Ibid, 400.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Ibid, 14.

⁵³ Ibid, 15.

⁵⁴ Ibid, 17.

⁵⁵ Ibid, 401.

⁵⁶ Rice, James. “Some Observations on Stiva’s Dream.” Tolstoy Studies Journal VIII, 1995-96, 117.

⁵⁷ Kolsto, Pal. “For here we do not have an enduring city: Tolstoy and the Strannik Tradition in Russian Culture.” The Russian Review 69:1, 2010, 125.

⁵⁸ Ibid, 130.

⁵⁹ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 482.

⁶⁰ Ibid, 794.

⁶¹ Ibid, 256.

⁶² Ibid, 791.

⁶³ Tolstoy, Leo. A Confession (1884). London: Penguin Group, 1987, 54.

⁶⁴ Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina (1878). New York: Penguin Group, 2002, 817.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

The Revolutions of 1989

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:00:45 -0400

The Birch is working away at its new upcoming issue!

Each year, the Birch publishes a journal issue containing work from undergraduates across the country, including work on politics, creative writing, literary criticism, photography, cultural essays, and translation, all relating to Slavic and Eastern European studies.

Once the journal is released, you will be able to find it on our website, but, in the meantime, here’s a submission from Charles Tian, a student at the University of Chicago. His piece considers the Revolutions of 1989 in Soviet satellite states, discussing why these revolutions were so surprising to political scientists at the time.

The Revolutions of 1989: Deep-Rooted Causes, but Unpredictable Outbreaks

By Charles Tian, University of Chicago

The Revolutions of 1989, which dramatically brought down the Communist governments of Eastern Europe’s Soviet satellite states, were certainly a shock to many Western observers when they occurred – Radio Free Europe succinctly captured this sentiment with the exclamation “Our jaws cannot drop any lower” – as they seemed utterly spontaneous, emerging from nowhere with a powerful force. However, while it would also be inaccurate to state that many people in the East foresaw the collapse of their governments, there were certainly those who, at least, had seen for decades that communism was a deeply flawed system, and, as such, were profoundly dissatisfied with it, therefore posing a deep threat to the perceived legitimacy of the self-proclaimed “people’s democracies.” Problems permeated all aspects of life in the communist states, ranging from politics to the economy; and while displeasure with such flaws was certainly not enough to topple governments on its own, the problems of communism ultimately ran too deep to be rectified, and discontent with them would easily be brought to public attention, with only a few sparks needed to set off the Revolutions. Yet, if the flaws of the communist system ran so deep, the Revolutions of 1989 should have been of no surprise to anyone when they did erupt, so, rather than focusing on systemic factors in attempts to explain the outbreak of the Revolutions, it is more useful to adopt a theory that focuses on the preferences of the individual citizens who rose in revolt against their governments; such a theory would explain the unpredictability of the Revolutions of 1989, as individual motivations are notoriously difficult to gauge.

For one, despite their description as “people’s democracies,” the Communist states of Eastern Europe were oppressive dictatorships: while they varied in their levels of political repression, they were certainly not democratic. As a result, everyday citizens across Eastern Europe became increasingly disillusioned with their governments and their Communist Parties. The Czech memoirist Heda Margolius Kovály saw the worst of the political system when her husband, Dr. Rudolf Margolius, a loyal official of the Communist Party, was arrested by Czechoslovakia’s State Security on trumped-up charges, convicted, and executed as a part of the larger Stalinist show trials of the “Slansky case.” Kovály captured the disillusionment that was mounting across Eastern Europe, as she grew increasingly disgusted with the lack of sensitivity displayed by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia over its lack of willingness to deal with the legacy of the Slansky trials: “The cowardice, the hypocrisy, the dishonesty, the shabbiness with which the Party officials tried to gloss over the past – all that could not be faced with calm and dignity.”^¹ Ultimately, as demonstrated by the case of Czechoslovakia, the Parties of Eastern Europe lost an enormous amount of their legitimacy by simply refusing to admit to the fact that they had committed grave errors, instead preferring to continue to pretend that all was good and well.

This is not to say that there were no attempts to reform the system. Change was certainly made possible after Joseph Stalin died in 1953, as Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denounced the horrors and excesses of the Stalinist system, thus beginning the process of de-Stalinization. However, the processes of change were ultimately limited in scope, as the Soviet Union itself remained unwilling to implement sweeping reforms for a long period of time, and prevented its satellite states from doing the same, therefore leading to the Red Army’s violent suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968. The Prague Spring itself was followed by a period of “normalization,” in which the new Soviet-installed government of Czechoslovakia, led by Gustáv Husák, resorted to increasing oppression and displayed enormous unwillingness to reform; this was a crucial moment, demonstrating that while reform had certainly been possible in the past, it was ultimately not accepted as a means of strengthening the communist system. Mark Mazower has noted that, as 1989 approached, the process that occurred in many of the satellite states was the opposite of de-Stalinization, as the Parties became weak and atrophied in their organization, and political power instead became concentrated on individual leaders, centralized around the four so-called “little Stalins:” Gustáv Husák of Czechoslovakia; Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania, Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria, and Erich Honecker of East Germany.^² All four dictators were elderly hardliners who refused to change, even as the Soviet Union itself finally embraced reform, and this uncompromising attitude would not aid them in holding onto power.

The economic sector was one that saw even fewer attempts at reform than the political one, and the basic economic model for Eastern European states remained more or less unchanged throughout the Communist period. When the Soviet Union first created satellite states, it imposed upon them Stalinist Five-Year Plans, which called for rapid Soviet-style industrialization at the expense of consumer goods. The new industrial “strength” of the Communist states, however, was, in reality, horribly inefficient and ruinous to their economies. Mazower has described the case of Romania, which saw “the creation of monsters like the oil refineries which operated at 10 per cent of capacity, or the aluminum complex which used up as much energy as the whole of Bucharest.”^³ Industrialization also had extremely harmful effects on nature, as the new democratically elected President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, reflected in his 1990 New Year’s Address to the Nation: “We have polluted the soil, rivers, and forests bequeathed to us by our ancestors, and we have today the most contaminated environment in Europe. Adults in our country die earlier than in most other European countries.”^⁴

Since the prices of consumer goods were fixed, shortages of those led to long lines and steadily worsening quality. Several states attempted to solve these problems by following Yugoslavia’s example of borrowing from the West, but, as exemplified by Ceauşescu’s Romania, such strategies led to the introduction of austerity measures, whose burden fell on an increasingly unhappy populace. Notably, the Communist Parties threw away their legitimacy by losing the support of the working class, which had been so crucial to communist ideology. Poland was a dramatic case of this development, as Mazower explains: “in 1980 the rise of Solidarity showed the threat posed by workers turning against the Party which claimed power in their name.”^⁵ Mazower has also described the failure of a notable attempt to reform a Communist economy: that of the New Economic Mechanism in Hungary under János Kádár, where the gradual introduction of a limited market economy and trade with the West only worsened the country’s debt.^⁶ It had become clear to many Eastern Europeans that their economies lagged far behind those of the West, demonstrating that the Communist world was far from the workers’ paradise it claimed to be.

However, while the problems of the communist system were certainly apparent, very few observers, if any, predicted that they would lead to a wave of revolutions across the Eastern Bloc. The political scientist Timur Kuran instead explains the unpredictability of the Revolutions of 1989 by proposing a theory that emphasizes the role of individual citizens in prompting the outbreak of the Revolutions, paying less attention to the systemic flaws of communism. Kuran notes the weaknesses of other arguments concerning the outbreak of the Revolutions: The structuralist school cites social structure as a catalyst for political change, but, due to the inherent difficulty of studying the emotions and mental states of individuals, the structuralists have avoided such factors. Perhaps even more unhelpful, though, is the “voluntarist” theory of “rational choice,” which states that, even if they disliked their states, individuals were unlikely to revolt, given the risks associated with anti-government activity; they instead preferred to free-ride and allow other people to assume those risks. If most opponents of the state indeed preferred to do so, then this theory has simply provided an explanation of why the revolutions should not have broken out.^⁷ Finally, there is the theory of relative deprivation, which cites economic discontent as the driving force behind the Revolutions; while most, if not all, of history’s uprisings, including the Revolutions of 1989, have been driven by such factors, they are also common in states that do not experience revolutions and remain stable.^⁸

Instead, Kuran presents an argument that, unlike that of the structuralist school, focuses on the individual and his emotions; Kuran does not speak of “rational choice,” but of preference. Specifically, he distinguishes between what he terms “private preference,” or what an individual truly believed about the state and the opposition to it, and “public preference,” or the public actions of an individual that caused those around him to label him either as a friend or an enemy of the state. Kuran then proceeds to speak of “preference falsification,” which refers to the difference between the private and public preferences of the individual.^⁹ This aspect of the argument seems especially crucial in analyzing the Revolutions of 1989, as the Communist states often played an enormous role in creating preference falsification by forcing the public preferences of their people toward one extreme, expecting them to attend mass rallies and chant pro-government slogans. Kuran explains that preference falsification carried with it a steep psychological price: If an individual’s private preference pitted him against the government, the concealment of that preference amounted to what Kuran describes as “a sacrifice of personal integrity.”

Next, Kuran discusses the “revolutionary threshold” of individuals: Assuming that one’s public preference depended on private preference and the size of the public opposition, and that private preference remained constant, it can be said that public preference varied with the opposition of others. As the public opposition increased in scale, the cost of a single person joining the revolution decreased, and the revolutionary threshold was that point at which the cost of joining the revolution fell below the psychological cost of preference falsification.^¹⁰ Kuran then presents a hypothetical situation in which an assortment of individuals have varying revolutionary thresholds, and one of them has a bad experience with the state, which drives that person to rebel; if another individual has a low revolutionary threshold, the mere sight of a fellow rebel will be enough for that second individual to join the uprising, and this can set off a chain reaction that drives the entire assorted group of people to rebellion, one after another.^¹¹ But it could also be that all of the other individuals have high revolutionary thresholds, in which case one rebel will hardly be sufficient for the emergence of a large-scale uprising. Two crucial points emerge from this scenario: first, that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for individuals to gauge the private preferences and revolutionary thresholds of others (again, this point is crucial in examining the Communist states of Eastern Europe, which built up vast networks of police informants, thus discouraging many people from voicing their true thoughts in the presence of others) therefore making it correspondingly difficult to ascertain whether a society is on the verge of revolution or not.^¹² The second point is that even widespread dislike of the state is insufficient for the outbreak of a revolution, as the crucial factor is the revolutionary threshold; people must be willing to publicly express their dissatisfaction with the status quo, and the concealment of this dissatisfaction is precisely what made the outbreak of the Revolutions of 1989 such a surprise to those who observed them.^¹³

All of the political and economic flaws of communism became apparent from the time of the establishment of the “people’s democracies,” and they only worsened over the course of the following decades, as all attempts at reform ultimately ended in failure or were abandoned by conservatives who refused to change. However, as problematic as the communist system was, public anger with the Communist Parties of Eastern Europe failed for a long time to muster the strength needed to bring the system down, and, as such, many Western political scientists saw no indication that the Communist states were about to collapse, even as 1989 itself arrived, despite the ominous outlook held by many people of the Eastern European states themselves. Timur Kuran has presented a thorough argument that explains why it was so incredibly difficult both to predict the outbreak of the Revolutions of 1989 and to actually ignite them: ultimately, it would require a decisive moment, a spark, to ignite public sentiment and lower revolutionary thresholds, and that spark would come from above, as the Soviet Union was willing to acknowledge its own internal problems, and Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms of glasnost and perestroika encouraged aspirations for change throughout Eastern Europe. In addition, Gorbachev promulgated what was jokingly termed the “Sinatra Doctrine,” as he allowed the Soviet Union’s satellite states to “do it their way,” refusing to crush the revolutions as the Red Army had earlier done with the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring. These policies would begin crises within the echelons of the Communist governments of the satellite states – such as that of East Germany’s widespread demonstrations of early October, when officials disobeyed the orders from Erich Honecker to open fire on the protestors – therefore forcing them into an increasingly precarious position, and this, combined with growing public resistance, would ultimately result in their demise, as change swept out of control from one Communist state to the next.

1 Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968, Translated by Franci Epstein and Helen Epstein with the author, (New York, NY: Holmes & Meier, 1997), 169.

2 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2000), 370-371.

3 Ibid, 364.

4 Vaclav Havel, New Year’s Address to the Nation, 1/1/1990.

5 Mazower, Dark Continent, 365.

6 Ibid, 366.

7 Timur Kuran, “Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics 44, no. 1 (October 1991): 14.

8 Ibid, 16.

9 Ibid, 17.

10 Ibid, 18.

11 Ibid, 19.

12 Ibid, 20.

13 Ibid, 21.

Creative Writing: Selected Poems

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:00:43 -0400

The Birch is currently working on its annual publication, to be released later this Spring.

The journal, the first undergraduate journal for Slavic and Eastern European cultures, covers literary criticism, politics, creative writing, photography, and translations.

In preparation of the upcoming release, here is a creative writing submission from Ekaterina Petrikevich of several poems.

Сарафан, Ekaterina Petrikevich

Я, разбирая свой походный чемодан,

Совсем случайно в нем его нашла -

Забавно милый из шифона сарафан

С пятном средьземноморского вина.

Он был смешным, таким наивно ярким,

С полоской соли прямо на груди.

И от него хрустяще пахло жарким,

И волнорезами блестящими вдали.

А в складках пестрой гладкой ткани

Прибоя шелестом терялся голосок,

В воде блестели перламутром камни,

А пальмы финики кидали на песок.

Ракушки ноги жгли на диком нашем пляже,

Вода, горя, за августом звала нас в даль…

Все это время он, на самом дне лежавший,

Хранил мне преданно от счастья календарь.

март 2012

Молчи, Поэт! Ekaterina Petrikevich

Вынь из шкафа пылью покрытую душу,

Крепко встряхни её словно из драпа пальто.

Молчи Поэт! Просто сиди и молча нас слушай,

А душу толпе подари или в музей – под стекло.

Из шкатулок своих ты рассыпь нам под ноги

Яркие бусы блестящих, как слезы, стихов.

Голову молча склони и уйди прочь с дороги!

Поэт, ты - торговец небрежно оброненных слов.

Дай нам напиться безоблачно яростным смехом,

Холодным огнем обогрей от своих почерневших потерь.

И пусть нам навеки будет забавной и милой потехой -

Смотреть, как угрюм и смешон твой раненый, загнанный зверь.

Чего ты так хмур? Твой голос предательски дрогнул…

Зачем кобуру твоя нервная ищет рука?

Поэт, ты о мире ни слова, ни грамма не понял!

Сиди и молчи – так велела толпа!

01 ноября 2012

*** Ekaterina Petrikevich

Запыхался маленький мальчик,

Беспокойно в окошко стучит.

Кошка в окошке мурлычет,

И радио тихо хрипит.

И мальчик кусает всё губы,

Варежкой иней скребет,

Стучат молочные зубы,

А шарф по сугробу ползет.

В комнате тихо и ясно,

Корешками стены горят,

Кружевом белым хрустящим

Салфетки дуб темный чертят.

На кресло накинуто платье,

На ручке лента блестит,

А мальчик все смотрит с тоскою,

В окошко неловко стучит.

Девочка в тапочках желтых

Стоит за мальчишки спиной:

- Мама будет ругаться,

Пошли к нам скорее домой!

В парадную молча заходят,

Листок он ей в руку кладет…

Девочка горько плачет,

И лента в косичке цветет.

Она стоит на вокзале

В мехом подбитом пальто.

Где же он, милый мальчик?

Ждет январями его.

Поезд подходит к перрону,

Люди все мимо бегут,

Она же глазами ищет,

Меж тех, кого вовсе не ждут.

Девочка горько плачет,

Листочек в ладошке горит.

Где же тот милый мальчик,

Что варежкой иней стучит?

4 февраля 2013

Literary Criticism: Gogol's "How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich"

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:30:20 -0400

The Birch’s annual publication is currently in production!

The magazine will be released later this spring, containing a collection of literary criticism, politics, creative writing and translations, all submitted from undergraduate students across the country, and all relating to things Eastern European.

As a small preview of the upcoming journal, here’s an article submitted from Eliza Desind, a senior at Rutgers University. Her piece, entitled “Friends and Allies?”, examines the friendship and subsequent enmity between Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich in Gogol’s short story on the pair. She explores the Ivans’ relationship in conjunction to the nineteenth-century political tensions of Russia and Ukraine.

Friends and Allies?: Gogol’s Tale about the Two Ivans and the Politics of Russo-Ukrainian Relations

By Eliza Desind, Rutgers University, Class of 2013

In Nikolai Gogol’s fictional town of Mirgorod live Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich, two “uncommonly devoted friends” and neighbors. In the opening of his 1835 short story, “How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” Gogol idealizes the pair as “friends like the world has never seen” (RW 31). Yet the continuation of the story relates the inane quarrel that ends this reportedly exceptional friendship. Readers have traditionally interpreted this story as a humorous battle between two hardheaded Ukrainian country-folk. Upon closer reading, what seems like a senseless quarrel emerges as Gogol’s commentary on Russo-Ukrainian relations. Edyta Bojanowska in her study of Gogol shows that Gogol conceived of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine as fraught with tension. I will argue that a similar dynamic occurs in Gogol’s tale of the two Ivans. Gogol uses the contrast between these two individuals to reflect on the disparity between the Russian Empire andUkraine. Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich’s power struggle and final disagreement are symbolic of the inequities and conflicts of Russo-Ukrainian relations.

Gogol’s description of one of the friends, Ivan Nikiforovich, resembles his characterization of Zaporozhian Cossack Paunchy Patsiuk in his short story, “The Night before Christmas.” Paunchy Patsiuk is described as having “lived like a real Zaphorozhets: didn’t work, slept three-quarters of the day, ate like six mowers, and drank nearly a whole bucket at one gulp.” He is lazy, of “stout girth” and it is “becoming more difficult each year for him to yet through the door” (PV 40). Ivan Nikiforovich’s lifestyle is quite congruent to that of Paunchy Patsiuk’s. Ivan Nikiforovich “lies in his porch all day – if it isn’t too hot he turns his back to the sun – and there he stays” (RW 32). Ivan Nikiforovich’s physical condition is almost identical to Paunchy Patsuik’s engorged frame. Ivan Nikiforovich “has such wide folds in his trousers that if you inflated them there would be room enough for the whole farmyard, barn and outbuildings” (RW 33). Like Paunchy Patsiuk, Ivan Nikiforovich also has trouble fitting through doors and on attempting to enter the courthouse he “[gets] stuck in the door and [cannot] move forwards or backwards” (RW 55). This comparison shows that Gogol fashions Ivan Nikiforovich as a Zaporozhian Cossack.

However, Paunchy Patsiuk is a Cossack of a particular kind. In contrast to Taras Bulba, who personifies the bold spirit of the Zaporozhian Cossacks at the height of their ferocity,Patsiuk exemplifies their decline. He no longer upholds the Cossack cult of machismo, embodied so memorably in Taras Bulba (PC). Both Ivan Nikiforovich and Paunchy Patsiuk represent the decline of masculinity, ferocity, and warlike activity among the Ukrainian Cossacks. Both are domesticated and homebound by their obesity, which endows their bodies with feminine curves. The unused Cossack clothing that Ivan Nikiforovich’s serf airs out in his backyard present a similar image of Cossack decline. Among them is a “Cossack tunic that Ivan Nikiforovich had had made twenty years ago when he was preparing for the army.” Like Ivan Nikiforovich’s body, the unused tunic now lays dormant amongst the “moth-eaten collar” and stained trousers (RW 34).

Ivan Ivanovich could not be more dissimilar from his obese and indolent friend. Although his land is separated from Ivan Nikiforovich’s land by only a flimsy wattle fence, he maintains an entirely opposite style of living. Aping the classy culture of Westernized Russia, Ivan Ivanovich is an “extraordinarily refined gentleman and you will never hear him utter a single indecent word in polite company” (RW 32). He is obsessed with his status as a nobleman and with his social rank, which were seen as Russian values that conflicted with the traditionally egalitarian social structure of the Cossacks. Instead of spending the day at rest like his neighbor, Ivan Ivanovich is active and engages in aristocratic activities such as hunting. Ivan Ivanovich’s physical shape “is on the thin side and tall,” which gives him a more noble and masculine appearance than that of his portly and slothful neighbor. The story begins as the narrator praises Ivan Ivanovich’s “marvelous short fur jacket” (RW 29). This eccentricity of style and attention to physical appearance found in westernized Russia contrasts greatly with the crude Ivan Nikiforovich who lies “on a rug spread out on the floor” in nothing but his “birthday suit” (RW 37). When Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich “set out for church arm-in-arm,” Ivan Ivanovich wears his “light woolen jacket” and Ivan Nikiforovich, his “yellowish-brown velveteen Cossack coat” (RW 43). The contrast between Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich’s physical appearance and lifestyle is similar to the contrast between that of the Russian nobility and Ukrainian Cossacks. The Ukrainian Cossacks maintained their traditional style of dress which included balloon-like trousers and forelocks while the Russian nobility adapted a more genteel, Western-European style of dress.

Analogous to the Western world of Gogol’s era, Ivan Ivanovich governs his household as an iniquitous patriarchy. Although Ivan Ivanovich is said to “never [have] had any children,” it is evident that he has fathered many by his housekeeper, Gapka, who is “a healthy girl with fresh looking thighs and cheeks.” Although Ivan Ivanovich never acknowledges the brood that runs around his yard as his own progeny, we find that he is their father when they address him as “Daddy” (PV 204). This puts in question the piety of Ivan Ivanovich, who is known to attend a church service each week. This irony alludes to the pattern of Russian rulers known to carry on illicit love affairs. For example, Empress Catherine II, who is mentioned in many of Gogol’s stories in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831-1832)and Mirgorod (1835), had “many publicly acknowledged lovers” (de Madariaga 45) and maintained a long-term sexual relationship with her political assistant, Grigory Potemkin (Montefiore 70). Ivan Ivanovich’s sexual relationship with his domestic serf, Gapka, along with his obsession with social rank and Westernized trappings, aligns him with the “Russian” patterns of behavior.

Moreover, the conflict between Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich, though seemingly trivial, symbolically encodes the conflict between the eighteenth-century Russian Empire and the Ukrainian Cossacks. Ivan Ivanovich views Ivan Nikiforovich as inferior whereas Ivan Nikiforovich views Ivan Ivanovich as an equal. This disparity of regard for one another is what constitutes the vulnerable hole in their relationship. This same disparity can be found in the relationship between the Russian Empire and the Cossacks. The 1654 Treaty of Pereiaslav that allied the Cossacks with Muscovy was taken to mean different things by both parties. The Cossacks understood the treaty to be a temporary military alliance and “a contractual agreement between equals” while the Russians understood the treaty as Ukraine’s “unilateral submission” for eternity. The Russian tsars proceeded to take away the privileges granted to the Cossacks by the treaty (Bojanowska 29-30). In a direct parallel, Ivan Ivanovich enjoys having Ivan Nikiforovich as an ally, yet his efforts to take advantage of his friend is what triggers the demise of their relationship.

When Ivan Ivanovich sees the rifle in Ivan Nikiforovich’s backyard he unsuccessfully attempts to convince Ivan Nikiforovich to give it to him. His main argument is that Ivan Nikiforovich “[doesn’t] really need it” and therefore does not deserve to own it. Ivan Ivanovich claims that he has “wanted one like that for ages” and he likes “having fun with rifles” (RW 35). Ivan Ivanovich feels entitled to the weapon and believes the world will not be right until it is in his hands. This presumptive notion of entitlement mirrors the argument used by Russia’s imperialists that desired to expand their boundaries. Ivan Ivanovich spies the rifle in Ivan Nikiforovich’s yard after he “survey[s] his storehouses, his yard, his sheds and his chickens…and [thinks]: ‘Good Lord! All this belongs to me! I’m not short of anything.” Next, his eyes “wander over Ivan Nikiforovich’s fence” and stumble upon his neighbor’s rifle (RW 34). In Ivan Ivanovich’s desire to own his neighbor’s rifle, he finds a reason to expand his domain of ownership beyond the boundaries of his estate. This expansive notion of entitlement to the possessions of others is an allusion to Russia’s imperial proclivities.

The rifle itself is a loaded, so to speak, symbol. It stands for masculinity as well as power and military prowess. Ivan Ivanovich feels entitled to the rifle because he considers himself superior to his friend. He sees Ivan Nikiforovich as lazy, effeminate, and unworthy of such a weapon. In persuading Ivan Nikiforovich to submit the rifle to him, Ivan Ivanovich argues, “[t]he Good Lord didn’t make you the type to go shooting! Your bearing and figure are far too dignified…you need repose and relaxation…you should behave in a manner that becomes you. Listen, give that rifle to me” (RW 39)! In his orotund manner Ivan Ivanovich implies that Ivan Nikiforovich is too fat and lazy to ever engage in the gentlemanly sport of hunting. Also, Ivan Ivanovich condescends to Ivan Nikiforovich as though he is instructing a subaltern native from a foreign land. This is exactly how the Ukrainians viewed Catherine the Great’s dismantling of the Zaporozhian Sech. Ivan Ivanovich wants his neighbor to relinquish his rightfully owned possession, his symbol of masculine defense, just like Catherine the Great forced the resignation of the Ukrainian Cossacks in defending and ruling the territory they had inhabited for four centuries.

When his demands fail, Ivan Ivanovich attempts to bargain for the weapon. He offers Ivan Nikiforovich his “dark-brown sow” and “two sacks of oats” in exchange for the gun (RW 40-41). Ivan Nikiforovich is insulted by this offer because he recognizes that the sow and the sacks of oats are perishable and comestible products not equal to the value of his solid, imperishable possession. The sow and oats Ivan Ivanovich offers to Ivan Nikiforovich in exchange for his rifle is a direct parallel to the pattern of economic and power relations between Ukraine and the Russian Empire. After the Ukrainian Cossacks were demilitarized and the land of Ukraine absorbed into the Russian imperial sponge, Ukraine became Russia’s bread basket. Ivan Ivanovich attempts to “demilitarize” his “Ukrainian” friend and limit him to agricultural pursuits like the Russian Empire eventually succeeded in doing to Ukraine, once the military mainstay of its independence - the Zaporozhian army - has been disbanded by Catherine II in 1775.

In the conclusion of “How Ivan Nikiforovich Quarreled with Ivan Ivanovich” the obstinate pair of Ivans continues its feud “covered in wrinkles” and “hair turned completely white” (RW 76). Readers find that although nearing their life’s end, they keep the grievances alive, awaiting the results of the ever-impending lawsuits they have both filed against each other. The profoundly pessimistic last line of the story, “It’s a dreary world gentlemen,” summons a tone of existential gloom (RW 77). But beyond this, Gogol here gestures at the irresolvable conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Empire during Gogol’s present. Just as two neighbors, locked by physical proximity into coexistence, Ukraine and Russia are locked into a relation of mutual dependence. The rivalry over power and status dooms the “friendship” of Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich. Gogol may well be saying that a similarly irresolvable antagonism splinters the Russo-Ukrainian relations as they are simply neighbors on a much larger scale. In this “dreary world,” there is no resolution in sight.

Works Cited

Bojanowska, Edyta. Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukraine and Russian Nationalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. Print.

de Madariaga, Isabel. “Catherine The Great.” History Today 51.11 (2001): 45. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

Gogol, Nikolai. “How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.” The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories. Trans. Ronald Wilks. New York: Penguin, 2005. 29-77. Print. [RW]

Gogol, Nikolai. Taras Bulba. Trans. Peter Constantine. New York: Modern Library Classics, 2003. Print. [PC]

Gogol, Nikolai. The Collected Tales. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Everyman’s Library, 2008. Print. [PV]

Montefiore, Simon Sebag. “Great Lovers, Leaders, Statesmen.” History Today 57.6 (2007): 70-71. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

Van Cliburn, winner of the first International Tchaikovsky...

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 17:48:00 -0500

Van Cliburn, winner of the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, died on Wednesday.

Time Magazine called him “The Texan Who Conquered Russia.” Cliburn, however, preferred to say that the Russians conquered his heart. (He was well-known for his politeness.)

Here he is performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with Kirill Kondrashin conducting; Moscow, 1962.

37 Reasons Why Russia Is A Crazy Awesome Place To Live

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 17:28:19 -0500

37 Reasons Why Russia Is A Crazy Awesome Place To Live:

13. This is the beach patrol in Russia.

Via: thecrazyrussians.com

And this is a common beach activity in Russia.

tiny-librarian: On February 21st, 1613 Michael I was...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:47:19 -0500

tiny-librarian:

On February 21st, 1613 Michael I was unanimously elected Tsar of Russia by a national assembly. He was the first Russian Tsar of the House of Romanov, which would rule over Russia for over 300 years.

Ya Romanovs! You go, Romanovs!!

The dread of the other

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:41:00 -0500

The dread of the other:

IF America did not exist, Russia would have to invent it. In a sense it already has: first as a dream, then as a nightmare. No other country looms so large in the Russian psyche. To Kremlin ideologists, the very concept of Russia’s sovereignty depends on being free of America’s influence.

fyeaheasterneurope: Kurentovanje, held in Ptuj, is Slovenia’s...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:02:15 -0500

fyeaheasterneurope:

Kurentovanje, held in Ptuj, is Slovenia’s largest Carnival celebration. Participants this year dressed as traditional mummers, poked fun of politicians, and dressed as scantily as possible in the February cold.

(Source.)

Kaunas, Lithuania (Smithsonian Photo of the Day)

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:00:57 -0500

Kaunas, Lithuania

(Smithsonian Photo of the Day)

In Soviet Russia you don’t find love, love finds...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:46:47 -0500

In Soviet Russia you don’t find love, love finds you…

Dashcrash

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:21:13 -0500

Dashcrash:

David Banks and Nathan Jurgenson on that disturbing Russian export: dashcam crash videos

Paczki, Chrusciki, and Other Fried Foods

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:00:47 -0500

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent for the Catholic Church. Traditionally, during the forty-day long season of Lent, Catholics were required to abstain from all meat, dairy and egg products. (Since Vatican II, however, these regulations have diminished to meatless Fridays only.)

In the days before Ash Wednesday, it was requisite to clean out one’s cupboards of all the butter, eggs, milk and cream that had accumulated.
Hence, the week before Lent became a time of donuts, fried dough, and other calorie-rich, fat-saturated foods.

Here are the Polish standards:

Paczki:

— and even with some whipped cream on top —

Also, how Packzi’s are made:

(The website also offers a recipe, in case you’re feeling particularly adventurous.)

Chrusciki (Angel Wings) are also a popular pre-Lenten fare:

They’re much simpler than Puszki: just dough, fried and coated in confectioner’s sugar. Source.

In the US, Chicago is the city to be when you’re looking for these Polish treats. One bakery alone will be making 80,000 donuts for Fat Tuesday. Detroit and Buffalo also have enthusiastic Paczki fans.

In NYC, Greenpoint is the place to look for these traditional treats.

This Week in Slavic Events (Feb. 12-17)

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:01:22 -0500

Tuesday, February 11th, NYU’s Jordan Center presents “Siberian Mestizos: Nation and Race in Asian Russia, 1860s-1920s.” The lecture, by David Rainbox, will discuss the idea of “Siberian nationality,” and reflect on Russia’s eighteenth and nineteenth-century political culture. More information can be found at the Jordan’s website.

Wednesday afternoon, David L. Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Human Rights at Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights and former advisor in the U.S. Department of State, will be discussing “Intervention”. The talk will address issues regarding the US’ intervention in foreign conflicts, focusing on Kosovo, the subject of Phillip’s recent book. More details can be found on the Harriman website.

This year is the 400th Anniversary of the House of the Romanov, and the Harriman Institute, along with the Slavic Department of Columbia University, will be devoting two days, from Feb. 14th to Feb. 16th, to examine the Romanovs’ history and legacy. During the conference, panels will discuss various aspects of Romanov rule (“Romanovs and the Jewish Question,” “Romanovs and Art”…). The conference opens Thursday afternoon with a keynote address from acclaimed historian Richard Wortman. More information can be found here.

If you’re still looking for that perfect Valentine’s, the Brooklyn Banya (602 Coney Island Ave.) will be hosting “A Steamy Valentine’s Night at the Russian Baths”, with the Hungry March Band, plates of pierogies, and (achem) an open vodka bar. The New Yorker writes: “the only [party] where you’ll come out cleaner than when you came in…” The party goes from 7pm-2am on February 14th.

On a more serious note, Sunday Feb. 17th is the last day to see Renata Poljak’s exhibition “Uncertain Memories” at the Stephan Stoyanov Gallery. Through video and photography, the Croatian artists examines history, memory, and the power of political ideologies. More information, and links to several of Poljak’s works, can be found at the Gallery’s website.

Reining In Slovak Superstitions

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:08:00 -0500

Last week, I was awoken at 3 a.m. by a frantic “Zuzka, are you okay?” In the middle of the week, when I had to get up at 7 the next day, my dear, very FOB-y, and very Slovak mother was calling me because she just had a nightmare. She dreamed that I fell off a white horse, which all sane people interpret as a symbol of death. Or at least so says my mom and all her friends. Fortunately, my grandmother’s dream dictionary interprets the white horse as a “broken promise,” so I might make it after all.

Later that day, my mother called to complain that my Brazilian stepfather only gave her a blank stare when she told him about her premonition – white horses are apparently not a harbinger of death in Brazilian dreamology. This episode, along with my mother’s constant nagging about my imminent death, got me thinking: why does she react this way to a dream? Moreover, to what extent is her reaction an expression representative of a cultural value?

And so, I turned to the source of all knowledge *~the internetz~* and started googling. Naturally, when I typed in “EasternEurope+superstition,” I was flooded with results detailing the various different “superstitions” practiced in Russia and the surrounding region. Yes, yes, I know not to hug someone over a threshold (you and your close one will experience emotional separation), not to buy any baby items before the baby is born (my mother still refuses to go to her American friends’ baby showers), and I know I am doomed for the day if I return home to pick up something I forgot. I was not surprised: I grew up with these superstitions and I know many people who follow them. But are Eastern European superstitious traditions in any way different from the rest of the world?

Thus, I returned to my original problem: dreams. I hypothesized that if Slovakia is as dream obsessed as my mother, than there will be many websites discussing the issue. Slovak Google yielded 3,230,000 hits for the word “snár” meaning “dream dictionary.” Looking west, Czech Google was about a million behind, with 2,210,00 hits for the same word. The French-speaking world got 4,450,000 hits with “rêveur” and the English-speaking Google yielded 21,800,000 for the search “dream dictionary.” Now to pull a Beyonce and move to the right of Slovakia, a search via the Ukrainian Google comes up with 12,900,000 hits for the word “сонник” while Google.ru finds 45,500,000 results for “мечта словарь.”

While the disparity between the Russian and English-speaking worlds is fairly striking, these numbers become much more interesting when put in the context of the population that would be googling them. Keeping in mind the fact that technology is more prolific in the West and therefore more people in general are googling in English than in Russian, these ratios are all the more fascinating. For example, if you are talking to someone in English, the chance that that person has searched online for “dream dictionary” is 5 in 100. However, if you are talking to someone in Slovak, it is 59 in 100, in Ukrainian 35 in 100, and in Russian 29 in 100. At least according to Google, my mother’s fears are culturally justified.

One more thing to note: as I was googling “snar”s and “сонник”s, Google kept showing me associated searches. Amusingly enough, people in Slovakia search most often for dreams about snakes, teeth and death, while Czechs look up dreams about cheating, snakes and love. By contrast, English speakers are usually trying to download Meek Mill’s “Dream and Nightmares.”

Of course, these examples do not prove that the English speaking world does not aim to interpret its dreams or that dream interpretation and other superstitions are a distinctly Eastern European phenomenon. However, it seems that Eastern Europe – and specifically Slovakia – is more hung up on their dreams than other places. There might be many reasons as to why that is, which would require a closer look at the understanding of religion in Eastern Europe, along with the collective historical memory, the different nationalities, and other social factors. Perhaps it has something to do with Eastern European pagan practices that never really died or maybe with the Communist ban on religion or maybe the need for an explanation why things are the way they are – either way, that analysis would require a lot more evidence than just good, ol’ Google.

So for now, stay dreamy, Slovakia.

Found this poking around The Birch’s web traffic report...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:12:21 -0500

Found this poking around The Birch’s web traffic report for last month and was wondering what the hell was going on. Why so much love for “woman kvass?” Turns out we have the top google image search result for “woman kvass.” Congrats us!

Photo

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 12:44:15 -0500