Biography and Communism

Besides the entertaining aspects of their narratives, biographies and autobiographies generally serve two distinct functions in a society. One type displays the heroic or notable accomplishments of an individual to be emulated by the community at large. The other showcases the tragic pitfalls of life through the tale of a character whose actions are to be avoided. Under high Stalinist socialist realism, the latter appears to have been shunned in favor of uniform stories about positive heroes. This created something of an imbalance in the official art and literature. Given the works read in this class, the biography-style fiction of the post-thaw period, most notably Abram Tertz's Little Jinx, Sergei Dovlatov's The Suitcase and Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog, "balanced" the genre by showcasing flawed and tragic individuals while simultaneously and invariably critiquing the system which created the imbalance in the first place.

Under Soviet communism, all individuals are supposedly equal in all regards and can be scientifically conditioned to live in a teleological utopia. This system creates an interesting quandary for the autobiography and biography. Whereas in western capitalism, there are multiple pathways to success and multiple ways to fail, the Soviet-style system can only logically and plausibly feature one method for success and one method for failure. To thrive, one must join the communist party, adhere to their dictates, and devote their life to furthering the goals of socialism. If one works against the goals of the political party, they will fail. The singular political party must never be shown in error, and to show a hero who defies or ignores the party's orders and achieves success is to demonstrate a "backward" step in a structure driven by progressivism.

This principle plays itself out in Nikolai Ostrovsky's How The Steel Was Tempered. Pavel Korchagin's sole motivation in life is too boost the communist party cause. He vows to follow the Revolutionary Military Council's somewhat absurd order to prevent stains on the military banner. He disregards physical pain in order to work for the party. Even in blindness and pain, he finds solace in the party's new accomplishments as broadcast over the radio. Towards the end of his life, Ostrovsky's autobiographical character is left spending all of his remaining energy writing out his life story for the party goal. No other motivating factor can exist; the moment one does an action independent of the party, the party becomes irrelevant in their success or failure, and under the propaganda and official art of the Soviet Union, that simply could not be allowed.

Later works which shared similarities with the biography style sought to rectify the lack of alternative forms. forms. Little Jinx, Abram Tertz's autobiography of Andrei Sinyavksy, does so by portraying its main character as a diminutive, ugly, mediocre writer and critic who brings ruin to everything with which he involves himself. He does so not because he goes against the ruling elite, but rather oftentimes because the dictates of the ruling elite are followed. His second brother is sent off to prison for uttering a truthful criticism, and his third brother dies because Sinyavsky sprints to him with haste to get him to the front to fight the war. His literary criticism similarly does not stray from the party line. "[W]henever I am sent a story or poem to review, I read it and ask myself, before giving my assessment, could you hear the bell?...Or was this just a product of the mind, of idleness, of emotion?" The thought that emotions and ideas taint poetry is a very socialist realist statement. This also runs counter to Tertz's ideas of a "phantasmagorical art" and the absurdity of Little Jinx itself. Therefore, it appears that Tertz's autobiography of Sinyavsky is his own sort of way to cope with his other self, the communist supporter Andrei Sinyavsky. Either way, his use of the autobiographical form - by showing the youth, important events, and possibly the death of the author - serves to give a more diverse portrait of party supporters, to counter the notion that implicit support of the party inherently leads to success.

Similarly, Dovlatov's The Suitcase reframes the autobiography by categorizing it in terms of material possessions. Instead of the chronological x, then y, then z form utilized by Ostrovsky, which gives a feeling of progression to his work, Dovlatov uses vignettes surrounding a man's items in his suitcase with chronology becoming irrelevant. "The clothes were piled up in a motley mound on the kitchen table. That was all I had acquired in thirty-six years. In my entire life in my homeland. I thought, Could this be it? And I replied, Yes, this is it." Whereas Ostrovsky seems to argue that life is about progressively becoming more in tune with the party's goals while the party leads the society to a utopian state, Dovlatov replies that material possessions and memories matter and other things simply do not. The government in The Suitcase becomes a sort of perfunctory object that surrounds everyone. Though he criticizes various elements of the state, such as the KGB and the army, his ire toward the government falls short of the expected mordancy given his émigré status. The state and party just do not matter, as evidenced by he and his wife's absolute apathy towards everything, even voting. Whatever success or failure they have in life seems completely independent of the Soviet state.

In Mikhail Bulgakov's prescient Heart of a Dog, which is essentially the birth, life and death of Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, the main character is once more presented in a chronological fashion, but now he is entirely a creation of man, a reference to the principles which scientific progressivism commanded. Like Pavel Korchagin, Sharikov finds a niche in the party hierarchy and is proud to serve his duty. However, unlike in How the Steel Was Tempered, the writer shows the character's overwhelming negative characteristics. Science, Bulgakov writes, should not be done at the sacrifice of humanity. The only character in the novel who winds up looking sympathetic is the dog, the only one who really has nothing to do with science or the Soviet bureaucracy. Instead, he eats, sleeps, chases cats, and whines; he performs his simple animal functions without trying to construct a scientific utopia for himself.

Therefore, in these three novellas, the authors deconstructed the socialist realist biographical narrative by showing the fallacy in linking ones fate to the party, showing material possessions and memories to be more important ends of action than the party, and showing an absurd tragic element of scientific advance, respectively.