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“A New Enigmatic Language”: The Spontaneity-Consciousness Paradigm and the Case of Gladkov's Cement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Eric Laursen
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Abstract

Although Cement was a model for later socialist realism, Katerina Clark has argued that Gleb Chumalov does not achieve consciousness, a requirement for later heroes, but instead remains spontaneous. In this essay, Eric Laursen argues against Clark's widely accepted interpretation. By introducing the idea of instinct (class, worker, revolutionary), which Anna Krylova has shown to be central to Bolshevik thought in the early years of the twentieth century, Laursen argues that Gleb does gain consciousness. Gleb does not move from spontaneity to consciousness, however. Instead he learns to control and guide his own instincts and those of others. Two other characters also transform themselves. Gleb's wife Dasha illustrates a similar but distinct path forwomen. Sergei Ivagin, who must abandon conscious thought to first develop instinct, illustrates a different path for the intelligentsia. The attainment of consciousness is presented as a rebirth or maturation and involves the acquisition of “conscious language.” In the party purge at the end, those who speak unconsciously, therefore misleading and confusing the masses, are cast out of the party. The newly conscious Gleb and Dasha, who now speak properly, take their place as leaders.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , Spring 2006 , pp. 66 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Stuthes. 2006

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References

This article is part of a larger project begun at the Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah, where I was a Nathan Aldrich Fellow. I thank the center for its support. The epigraphs are taken from Gladkov, Fedor, Tsement, Sobranie sochinenie (Moscow, 1927), 2: 82 Google Scholar, and Bukharin, Nikolai and Preobrazhenskii, Evgenii, The ABC of Communism: A Popular Explanation ofthe Program of the Communist Party of Russia (Ann Arbor, 1966), 194 Google Scholar.

1 Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich, “What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement,“ in Tucker, Robert C., ed., The Lenin Anthology (New York, 1975), 24, 29 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

2 Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago, 1981), 16 Google Scholar. By contrast, Regine Robin rejects transformation as the focus of the socialist realist novel; according to Robin, it is only “implied by the process of action.” Robin, Regine, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic, trans. Porter, Catherine (Stanford, 1992), 259 Google Scholar.

3 Clark, Soviet Novel, 3.

4 Ibid., 86.

5 Ibid., 16.

6 Ibid., 82.

7 Ibid., 69, 72.

8 Ibid., 72. See also Smirnova, L. N., “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement,” in Tekstotogiiaproizvedenii sovetskoi literatury (Moscow, 1967), 172–73Google Scholar.

9 Lunacharskii, quoted in Smirnova, “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement,1’ 180. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

10 Gladkov was a member of Proletkul't, Kuznitsa, and VAPP (Vserossiiskaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh pisatelei). The only group to uniformly condemn the novel and its hero were the members of LEF (Levyi front iskusstv); Halina Stephan discusses their opposition in detail. See Halina Stephan, “Cement: From Gladkov's Monumental Epos to Muller's Avant-Garde Drama,” Germano-Slavica 3, no. 2 (Fall 1979): 88-93. But even Osip Brik, who found Cement's themes unconnected and heroes falsely heroic, notes how well received Cement was in the press. O. M. Brik, “Pochemu ponravilsia Tsement,'’ Na literaturnompostul (1926): 30.

11 Sergei Budantsev, “O TsementeF. Gladkova,” Zvezda 5 (1925): 270.

12 Krasil'nikov, V., “Fedor Gladkov,” Oktiabr' 9 (1926): 134 Google Scholar.

13 Grossman-Roshchin, I. S., “Epokha i liudi (Fedor Gladkov-TsemenO,” Mobdaia gvardiia 9 (1926): 154 Google Scholar.

14 Gor'kii, quoted in Smirnova, “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement,” 162.

15 This is due in no small part to Clark's groundbreaking work, in which she calls this model “one of the key binary oppositions in Russian culture.” Clark, Soviet Novel, 20.

16 Krylova, Anna, “Beyond the Spontaneity-Consciousness Paradigm: ‘Class Instinct' as a Promising Category of Historical Analysis,” Slavic Review 62, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reginald E. Zelnik, although agreeing with Krylova, stresses that the concept of instinct can be seen, not as a replacement for the spontaneity-consciousness paradigm, but rather as an “enrichment.” Zelnik, Reginald E., “A Paradigm Lost? Response to Anna Krylova,“ Slavic Review 62, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Clark, Soviet Novel, 81.

18 Nicholas Luker, in an introduction to a collection of 1920s socialist realism notes: “In Gleb's dealings with his estranged wife, Dasha, and in his forgiveness for the tsarist engineer Kleist, we find perhaps the best illustration of the positive hero's conscious subordination of private emotions to public duty.” Luker, Nicholas, “Introduction,” in Luker, , ed. and trans., From Furmanov to Sholokhov: An Anthology of the Classics of Socialist Realism (Ann Arbor, 1988), 26 Google Scholar.

19 Between the appearance of the novel in 1925 and Gladkov's death in 1958, thirtysix editions of Cement appeared. Gladkov reworked every edition, making changes in plot, style, and characterization (major revisions in the text were made in 1932, 1947, and 1950). The translation commonly read in the west is from the 1920s. Therefore, a reader of the novel in English will have a radically different impression than someone reading a more recent Soviet edition. Robert Busch writes that the many changes Gladkov made to subsequent editions of Cement “transformed a novel with organic ties to the experimental context of the 1920s into one reflective of Socialist Realism.” Busch, Robert L., “Gladkov's Cement: The Making of a Soviet Classic,” Slavic and East European Journal 22, no. 3 (Fall 1978): 348 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Over time, Gleb and other characters become less critical of the party, and Gleb begins to spout the party line. Busch, “Gladkov's Cement,” 351-59. Therefore, the acquisition of consciousness becomes much easier; Smirnova notes the effect of such changes on Gleb: “He appears to be more patient, more attentive to the people around him. His responsibility for his acts and words is strengthened.” Smirnova, “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement,” 175. The most striking editorial change made to subsequent editions of Cement is in the depiction of Dasha. See Busch, “Gladkov's Cement,” 175-76; Friedberg, Maurice, “New Editions of Soviet Belles-Lettres: A Study in Politics and Palimpsests,” American Slavic and East European Review 13 (February 1954): 83–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smirnova, “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement.“ When Soviet laws to aid in the “withering away” of the family were reversed in the 1930s, Dasha was made to focus more on the nuclear family and less on society as a whole. Instead of being elected chair of the presidium, she is elected only a member and no longer makes an important proposal. She becomes less Deβant, hostile, and physically threatening with Gleb, replacing “comrade” with “dear” (rodnoi, milyi). She no longer has sex with others, nor does she push Gleb into a relationship with Polia. She becomes a better housekeeper, cooking and cleaning for Gleb. Conditions in the children's home are also better, so her decision to put Niurka there becomes less negative. These changes have a profound impact on the depiction of Gleb. He is no longer reduced to begging and pleading, and he is less jealous and violent. Instinct is therefore less powerful and consciousness much easier to acquire; he must still master his sexual jealousy, but this is much easier, since it is now totally unfounded. His fate is no longer in Dasha's hands; he himself can change and thereby regain his wife and home. For a discussion of the change in the literary presentation of women in the Soviet period, see Gasiorowska, Xenia, Women in Soviet Fiction: 1917-1964 (Madison, 1968)Google Scholar.

20 Krylova, “Beyond the Spontaneity-Consciousness Paradigm,” 15.

21 Gastev, A., “O tendentsiiakh proletarskoi kul'tury: Kontury proletarskoi kul'tury,“ in Brodskii, N. L., L'vov-Rogachevskii, V., and Sidorov, N. P., eds., Literatumye manifesty ot simvolizma k oktiabriu: Sbornik materialov (Moscow, 1929), 133 Google Scholar.

22 Aleksandr Bogdanov, “Proletariat i iskusstvo,” in Brodskii, L'vov-Rogachevskii, and Sidorov, eds., Literatumye manifesty ot simvolizma k oktiabriu, 130. Throughout Cement the word strength (sila) is used in connection with Dasha and Gleb. The weak Polia seeks “strength” from both of them.

23 Quoted in Sochor, Zenovia A., Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy (Ithaca, 1988), 148 Google Scholar.

24 Quoted in Brown, Edward J., Russian Literature since tlie Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 109 Google Scholar.

25 Krylova, “Beyond the Spontaneity-Consciousness Paradigm,” 2. After the Proletkul't fell from power, its ideas lived on in other groups: Kuznitsa, Oktiabr', LEF, and Rossiskaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh pisatelei (RAPP). All highly militant, these groups demanded ultimate authority over cultural affairs. They argued vehemently about organizational matters, but they essentially supported Bogdanov's vision. Oktiabr', the most militant of the proletarian groups, also echoes Bogdanov's theories; Leievich, a member of Oktiabr', writes: “The work of art acts principally on the feelings of the reader, viewer, or listener, in precisely the same way as a scientific work acts principally on the intellect. Art organizes the feelings, organizes the psyche, systematizes them at the same time as science systematizes thoughts.” Quoted in Kenez, Peter and Shepherd, David, “'Revolutionary' Models for High Literature: Resisting Poetics,” in Kelly, Catriona and Shepherd, David, eds., Russian Cultural Stuthes: An Introduction (Oxford, 1998), 31 Google Scholar. According to Peter Kenez and David Shepherd, even LEF, whose members strongly criticized the proletarians’ aesthetics, nevertheless “shared origins in the theories of Bogdanov, and shared goals in the determination to ensure that art played a role in the transformation of life.” Kenez and Shepherd, “Revolutionary Models,” 36. Although there were differences among the various proletarian groups, they all agreed on one basic idea: the writer would “organize” the individual and the societal psyche.

26 Gladkov, Fedor, Tsement, Sobranie sochinenie (Moscow, 1927), 2:242 Google Scholar. All quotes from the novel are from this source, and all translations are mine. Originally, Cement was published serially in Red Virgin Soil (1925), but, according to L. N. Smirnova, many passages and one entire chapter were removed by Aleksandr Voronskii, the editor of Red Virgin Soil; these were restored in the 1927 book version. Smirnova, “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement,” 16.

27 Clark writes that the word calm (spokoinyi) was used in the Soviet novel to indicate the acquisition of consciousness. She argues that the epithet is used in ambiguous ways in Cement and is usually applied to bureaucrats to indicate indifference. Clark, Soviet Novel, 82. But here we see that, in this instance at least, the adjective is used in the socialist realist manner.

28 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:286.

29 Gutkin, Irina, The Cultural Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic, 1890-1934 (Evanston, 1999), 115–21Google Scholar.

30 Gladkov, Tsemtmt, 2:11.

31 Ibid., 2:65.

32 For Motia's animal comparisons, see ibid., 2:8-11. Motia is also compared to a “little girl.” Ibid., 2:14. As we will see in later discussion, this is a sign that she lacks consciousness. For Savchuk's animal comparisons, see ibid., 2:14.

33 Ibid., 2:15.

34 Their restoration is paralleled by the factory's renewal. In the beginning, the factory is compared to a tomb; after the reestablishment of electricity, it now has vision; the windows of the factory are compared to “eyes that see at night.” Ibid., 2:107.

35 When Savchuk returns to work, we find him speaking about the barrels he fashions as women who have for too long been without a man. He describes them as nezhenikhalye (not betrothed). Ibid., 2:122. Gleb, observing Savchuk, also describes the moment in a sexual way: “healthy forces were awakened and filled with blood.” Ibid., 2:122.

36 Ibid., 2:26.

37 Ibid., 2:33.

38 Ibid., 2:289-90,291.

39 Ibid., 2:106.

40 Ibid., 2:127.

41 Ibid., 2:99. In the “metallic” Bad'in, Clark finds an allusion to Aleksandr Pushkin's Bmnze Horseman. Clark, Soviet Novel, 78.

42 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:303, 315, 311.

43 Ibid., 2:8. Thea Durfee argues that Dasha regains her “softness” and feminine attractiveness in Gleb's eyes after he learns to accept her as an equal. Durfee, Thea Margaret, “Cement and How the Steel Was Tempered: Variations on the New Soviet Woman,” in Hoisington, Sonia Stephan, ed., A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist in Russian Literature (Evanston, 1995), 93 Google Scholar.

44 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:78.

45 Ibid., 2:133.

46 Valer'ian Polianskii suggests as much in a 1926 review of criticism on Cement, when he writes the following about Dasha's relationship with Bad'in: “Perhaps, in all this, the author wanted to show the battle between the new way of thinking and the old, strong instincts governing the relations between the sexes.” Valer'ian Polianskii, “Tsement i ego kritiki,“ Na literaturnompostu, no. 5 - 6 (1926): 50.

47 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:167, 175, 39, 178. Thea Durfee also notes that Dasha becomes a “communal mother,” although not a communal wife. Durfee, “Cement and How the Steel Was Tempered,” 95.

48 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:250.

49 Ibid., 2:129,8, 30,8-9.

50 Ibid., 2:56. Gladkov professed to be greatly influenced by Lev Tolstoi. Perhaps his depiction of Polia is an homage to Anna Karenina, who also has curls that will not obey.

51 Ibid., 2:157,49, 244.

52 Ibid., 2:218,143,150,151.

53 Clark notes that the title character in Dmitrii Furmanov's Chapaev (another model for socialist realism) is also described as childlike before receiving the guidance of his mentor Klychkov. Clark, Soviet Novel, 88.

54 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:312. The phrase “reality in its revolutionary development“ was part of the official Deβnition of socialist realism formulated in 1934. Gladkov, in “My Work on Cement,” echoes this idea: “The task of art is to depict not only that which is but also that which ought to be, that is, art ought to depict reality in its aggressive movement and evolution.” Fedor Gladkov, “Moia rabota nad Tsementom,” Sobraniesochinenii (Moscow, 1958), 2:419-20.

55 Gorsuch, Anne E., “'A Woman Is Not a Man': The Culture of Gender and Generation in Soviet Russia, 1921-1928,” Slavic Review 55, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 644 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Sergei Ivagin, who also longs for the past, is, like Polia, described as “feminine“; when Gleb shakes Sergei's hand, he finds “in his fingers … softness and a feminine timidity.“ Gladkov, Tsement, 2:48.

57 Ibid., 2:253.

58 Ibid., 2:82, 230,230,132.

59 One-language schemes were prominent in the 1920s. Many believed diat, with the coming of worldwide communism, national languages would be abandoned and all would Uiink and speak as one (e.g., Nikolai Marr, the Esperantists, and so on). Aleksandr Bogdanov, the founder of Proletkul't, was a one-language proponent (his novel Red Star depicted a communist Utopia on Mars where the entire planet speaks the same language). While awaiting the evolution of this single language, however, Proletkul't worked to transform people by transforming the existing language, both in print—by ridding Russian of capital letters—and in spoken Russian—by purging it of jargon, slang, dialecticisms, and bourgeois elements. They wanted to remove the tainted, regressive elements from the language and create evolved proletarians by fashioning a truly proletarian language. Ryazanova-Clarke, Larissa and Wade, Terence, The Russian Language Today (London, 1999), 17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:28, 99, 26, 21, 68.

61 Ibid., 2:175.

62 Gleb and Dasha embrace the pet projects of both Lenin (electrification—Gleb's first project brings electricity back to the workers’ settlement and the factory) and his wife Krupskaia (literacy—Dasha conducts a literacy class, and the children's home where Dasha works is called the Krupskaia Children's Home).

63 Ibid., 2:249.

64 Ibid., 2:251, 314.

65 Ibid., 2:101, 37, 43.

66 Clark, Soviet Novel, 80. Thea Durfee quite righdy posits Dasha as Gleb's “mentor“ in the socialist realist mentor-disciple tradition, but I believe she is wrong in her claim Uiat Dasha is fully conscious at the beginning of the novel. Durfee, “Cement and How the Steel Was Tempered,” 95.

67 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:9, 36, 163, 296.

68 Ibid., 2:34, 74, 212,265.

69 Ibid., 2:266.

70 Ibid., 2:281, 280. Igal Halfin notes that the charge of childishness (mal'chishestvo) was used against at least one of the students purged at Leningrad Communist University in 1924. Halfin, Igal, “Between Instinct and Mind: The Bolshevik View of the Proletarian Self,” Slavic Review 62, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ironically, Gladkov was himself criticized in the 1920s for his use of language. Although they praised his plot and character, many critics attacked Cement's style, valuing it more for its content. Smirnova, “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement,” 173. For example, according to Robert Maguire, Aleksandr Voronskii, who first published the novel in the journal Red Virgin Soil, found Cement “devoid of literary merit.” Maguire, Robert A., Red Virgin SoiL Soviet Literature in the 1920s (Princeton, 1968), 321 Google Scholar. In each of the later editions, Gladkov worked to eradicate lexical and stylistic elements criticized in the early editions. For a discussion of these changes, see Smirnova, “Kak sozdavalsia Tsement.“

71 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:276, 270, 270.

72 Ibid., 2:49, 254, 256.

73 Durfee concurs: “The rape she suffers at Badin's hands is not depicted so much as inappropriate behavior for a party leader as the consequence of her own political and moral weakness.” Durfee, “Cement and How the Steel Was Tempered,” 94.

74 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:281.

75 Gorham, Michael S., Speaking in Soviet Tongues: Language Culture and the Politics of Voice in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb, 2003), 48 Google Scholar, 216n57.

76 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:316, 316, 308, 317.

77 Polianskii, “Tsement i ego kritiki,” 51.

78 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:55. After Gleb gives him useful work, the young man thes a noble death defending the factory and becomes an image, not of ridicule, but of heroic struggle and comradeship for the others.

79 Dobrenko, Evgeny, The Making of the Soviet Writer: Social and Aestlietic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture, trans. Savage, Jesse M. (Stanford, 2001), 180 Google Scholar.

80 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:303.

81 Ibid., 2:104, 238, 237.

82 Ibid., 2:246.

83 Ibid., 2:68.

84 Ibid., 2:47,113, 304. When he does think about the future, Sergei only agonizes about how he himself will be remembered; not once does he think about the factory.

85 Ibid., 2:287, 301.

86 Ibid., 2:307.

87 Ibid., 2:282.

88 Clark, Soviet Novel, 81.

89 Gladkov, Tsement, 2:314.

90 Ibid., 2:299.

91 Mally, Lynn, “Intellectuals in the Proletkult: Problems of Authority and Expertise,“ in Koenker, Diane P., Rosenberg, William G., and Suny, Ronald Grigor, eds., Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War: Explorations in Social History (Bloomington, 1989), 301 Google Scholar.

92 On the imitation of Cement, see Clark, Soviet Novel, 69.