Communist Art: War Stories, and the Metaphor of Movement

Throughout twentieth-century Russian literature, the motif of transportation and movement recurs frequently as a metaphorical means for the author to comment on the notions of forward progress and scientific teleology as espoused by the Soviet communist ethos. The heroes of socialist realism, for example, always seem to physically move unimpeded towards their simple goal, and they seem disoriented when forced to remain in one spot for any notable duration. In a critical commentary of this practice, artists of "the thaw" such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn deliberately chose to keep their characters in one place to force the type of psychological inquiry and confusion so uncharacteristic and awkward for men like Alyosha Ivanov and Pavel Korchagin. The differing role of "forward" or "positive" physical movement in the literature and film of mid- 20^th Century Russia thus becomes inversely related to the level of introspection and psychological evaluation afforded the main characters while simultaneously commenting on the nature of the Soviet Union's conception of inevitable progress.

or the bulk of the film Fall of Berlin, the thoughts of the protagonist Alyosha seem to rotate between three interrelated ideas: his desire to see Natasha, his unwavering adoration of Joseph Stalin, and his thirst to kill Germans. Conveniently, all three of these goals can be satisfied in the same location, and virtually every shot of Alyosha in the latter two-thirds of the movie has him moving at a steady, unrelenting, unstoppable pace towards his target, Berlin. He and his fellow Russian troops have no visible difficulties or setbacks in pushing their formidable foe from Moscow to Germany, the whole process seeming to take no time at all. When his battalion comes to a concentration camp wall - the first genuine obstacle they seem to encounter - one of the tanks simply drives through it as if it were made of paper. Nothing can stop Alyosha or Russia in their quest, and upon conquering Berlin, they only pause briefly to celebrate their accomplishments; the clear indication of the foreign flags and shouts of love for Stalin at the end of the film is that the peoples of the West yearn for communism, even if their leaders conspire against the Soviet Union.

Yet despite his hero status, Ivanov receives much less screen time than Adolf Hitler. Besides the comic relief provided by Hitler's maniacal egocentrism, there are important reasons for this. First, it reduces the odds of the viewer seeing something in Alyosha which they might find undesirable. The chances that a character will have an identifiable flaw increase with his amount of exposure, and since the goal of socialist realist art of the "High Stalinist" period was to create perfect socialist role models with simple motivations and actions, it made sense to not have the hero dominate the film as he would in a more traditional epic. Furthermore, the shots of Hitler in his war room show an outsider's perspective on the inevitability of Russian progress and the fallibility of trying to obstruct them as he looks at the shifting lines on his map. Alyosha Ivanov camped and rested on several occasions during his trip to Berlin. Whereas in other war films those scenes become a chance to look into the character's mind and the true hardships of war, Fall of Berlin must instead cut from the battlefields directly to the German war room to protect its message of constant advance and simplistic goals.

Nikolai Ostrovsky utilizes similar techniques in his novel How the Steel Was Tempered. The main character Pavel has one sole motivation: to work for the communist party. Though unlike Alyosha his physical movement has many setbacks and impediments - such as his car accident and his war injury - the same basic undercurrents exist. Since his goal is simply to do everything he can for the party's cause, his physical situation and movement are less vital than Alyosha's. Given Pavel Korchagin's injuries and setbacks, it might be useful to look at the other genuine socialist realist hero in the novel, Fyodor Zhukhrai. A sailor, significantly an occupation of movement, "Fyodor made the most of his enforced inactivity." Such a tone reveals a hatred of inertness, which becomes ironic given his situations later in the narrative. However, despite his often-stationary state, the reader still never sees any authentic introspection or psychology beyond his straightforward and unshakable goal of a communist education and party work. Additionally, Ostrovsky uses the same technique as Fall of Berlin does with its use of Hitler when Pavel is in the military hospital and the doctor's diary is reprinted in the text. With the protagonist recuperating, a perfect opportunity exists for self-reflexivity, but this is passed upon in order to record an observer's surprised reactions to his inevitable progress. While different than Fall of Berlin with respect to movement and transportation, How the Steel Was Tempered fits to the hypothesis presented because the main character still has no physical impediments to his ultimate goal and success (in this case, writing the novel) and the same resistance to psychological complexity exists.

By contrast, Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood presents a main character with both mild psychological complexity and various impediments to his objective. Young Ivan has a fairly simple overarching motivation in wishing to avenge his family. However, unlike Korchagin, who is sent away from the front and his duties so he can become well for the fight, Ivan's commanding officers send him away from the front for no reason other than his youth. This is basically "negative" transportation as he is being taken away from accomplishing his goal in any form by fellow communists. Such would never happen in "High Stalinist" socialist realism. Additionally, the front never moves and Tarkovsky resists the urge to show anything from the German perspective. In such a situation, the characters in the film are forced to have realistic emotions, interpersonal relationships and even, in Ivan's case, dreams. Thus, unlike Fall of Berlin, the audience is allowed to witness traits uncharacteristic of the stereotypical socialist heroes. Despite his steadfast resolution, Ivan occasionally acts like an immature child, and his superiors argue and openly discuss the brutal nature of war. In terms of movement on the way to goal-achievement, Ivan at first takes up the socialist hero flair and swims an unfathomable distance to return to camp. However, in his last attempt, for whatever reason he cannot return and is captured by the Germans. Whereas his Russian soldier superiors eventually stand in the Reichstag, there are significant impediments and tragedy on the journey; while the tanks in Fall of Berlin drove straight from Moscow to Berlin without stopping for a second, the vehicles of Ivan's Childhood become stuck, and in pulling them out, the characters question whether the journey is worth it at all.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn takes this motif one step further in his novella An Incident at Krechetovka Station. Like Alyosha, Pavel, and Ivan, the protagonist Zotov wants desperately to go and fight on the front with the rest of his comrades. However, he remains behind working a dull job at a railway depot. Solzhenitsyn makes him contemplate his situation, and the gateway into his thoughts shows that not only does his mind often wander away from his specific target, but he has no real idea where that target physically resides. "Depression gripped Zotov. It stemmed from the need to complain to someone about the course of the war, which was wildly inconceivable to him. From the reports of the Information Bureau he couldn't make out where the front lines were." Not only is he being held back from his personal motive by his communist brethren, he has no idea where he would even go if he could escape his tedious life to achieve said goal. To add insult to injury, his job is to ship troops and supplies around the country and towards the front. Thus, his stationary position becomes torture as he must watch others move in his desired positive direction.

As a consequence, the thoughts of this good socialist who has diligently read das Kapital often wander from his goal of being at the front, such as when he thinks of his living situation and the possible presence of gossip reaching a female friend of his. "He had been distracted from his work by these thoughts," Solzhenitsyn writes, but in reality this is double voicing. Zotov's rational, socialist hero side knows he should be industriously laboring away, but his emotive, human elements want to ruminate upon personal problems, likely as a coping device to escape the melancholy associated with his work situation. In the end of the story, he finds his ultimate such mental diversion in Tveritinov. It could be interpreted that simply because his physical placement forced him to watch men all around him venture off to his own goal in some unknown location, Zotov comes to have a conscious regarding the moral ambiguity of his decision to report Tveritinov as a potential spy. "[F]or the rest of his life, Zotov could never forget that man..." the text ends. Due to a lack of physical movement towards his functional objective, the main character must question and philosophize, and eventually in An Incident, Zotov's primary purpose evolves from being a socialist machine on the road to an inevitable destination to being an introspective, ethically-concerned individual.

Thus, in these four World War II stories, an observer can witness a clear artistic progression from the works of socialist realism to the official works of the thaw. The two aforementioned "High Stalinist" pieces can be characterized by constant action and unrelenting positive movement towards the main character's objective. Often in narrative works, times of rest or slower movement serve as opportunities to look deeper into a character's psychology, but in the art of pro forma socialist realism, these periods are either veiled by shifting the perspective to an outside observer who views only constant advancement or they are omitted altogether. This practice greatly skews time and place, so that the viewer perceives "forward" movement and progress towards a goal to be much simpler and quicker than it in fact should be. Tarkovsky and Solzhenitsyn present a more realistic conception of time and movement, which allows the consumer a more sensible outlook on the nature of progress towards even the most simplistic of objectives.

This shift between the uses of physical movement and the level of realism and psychological inquiry represents a broader shift in the purpose of official art in the Soviet Union. Under the dictatorship of Stalin, there was no room for questioning his supreme authority. As a consequence, official propaganda could never show a Russian hero who is completely stalled en route to his primary stated goal, especially when the motivation is provided solely by the ruling elite as it is in How the Steel Was Tempered and Fall of Berlin. If such a character would become delayed towards full achievement, the audience may question what was wrong with the plans, even if the character did not. By metaphorical extension, they might wonder if the Soviet Union was moving on the wrong pathway, or if their country was continuously headed towards the teleological endpoint which their government promised. Inexorable positive movement and action leaves no room in the mind of the viewer to contemplate the wisdom of the plan at hand, or anything else for that matter.

When Khrushchev took the reins of Soviet power, he openly questioned the prudence of Stalin's "plan" for logical progression. In official art, the ramifications of his beliefs manifested themselves in the ability for a writer or director to stop a character's positive motion and movement and take a hard look at the state of affairs. If one takes Zotov as a metaphor for Russia, this aspect of official art can clearly be seen. Zotov does everything in his power to become a better communist, from reading Marx to suppressing his emotions to attempting to tirelessly work on bureaucratic paperwork. Yet despite his mechanical model behavior, the plans of Stalin have left him behind a muddled, chaotic front, where he is forced to acknowledge that the war plans are possibly inadequate and that he is a human being with animalistic emotions. Such allegorical commentary essentially states that the mechanical, inevitable progress shown under Stalin was an utter fallacy and that Russia must look to her heritage and her morality to learn where the true "front" is, develop a coherent plan for reaching it, and move in a genuinely positive direction, i.e., achieve "socialism with a human face."

These four works all became approved official literature because at least with respect to the physical movement and introspection motif, they fit well with the desires of the Soviet elite. However, in the stagnation period under Brezhnev, the theme of physical transportation would be turned completely on its head by dissident writers such as Venedikt Erofeev. In his Moscow to the End of the Line, the protagonist not only moves in a seemingly negative direction (as "end of the line" has "backwards" connotations compared to Moscow) but the only reason he is on such a voyage seems to be because of his intoxication, which only increases as his reflective journey continues. Such a tale seems to represent the conclusion of a trend started with Fall of Berlin and the works of socialist realism where the level of introspection rises and the level of unimpeded progress towards a positive, certain goal drops. In terms of greater meaning for Russian culture, this shift as shown in the four war stories discussed earlier reveals a shift in perception as to the possibility of logical, inevitable, societal perfection as attempted in the mid-20^th century, a political desire to bring humanity and morality into Russian governance, and a wish to make art more relevant by focusing on the stationary psychological realities of life instead of man as an object in perpetual motion towards an inevitably-attained goal.