Trifonov's Russia

...CultureWatching TRIFONOV'S RUSSIA BY PETER KENEZ URI TRIFONOV is a literary phenomenon He is well thought of by the Soviet critical intelligentsia A play based on his story, "The Exchange," is the great popular success of the Moscow theater season And his works, the most interesting to come out of the Soviet Umon m years, are increasingly subversive (A collection x>i his stories, The Long Goodbye, was published by Ardis m 1978, his novel, The House on the Embankment, will be issued by Simon & Schuster in the near future ) Few major writers have had such unpromising beginnings Tnfonov received the Stalin Prize for a novel, Students, in 1951, when he was only 26 years old Since the book was among the very few products of Socialist Realism ever translated into English, it was, on occasion, used in American college courses as a horrifying example of the genre Over the last two decades, however, he has found his medium, the short novel, he has developed a style of his own, and, most importantly, he now writes about real people in real situations Tnfonov is not an experimentalist, there are few traces of modermsm in his writings His language is simple and his plots, while intricate, are unsurprising His strength lies in his ability to create characters and place them in their family and social contexts His description of the minutiae of Moscow life is marvelously evocative His interest in character inevitably turns him into a moralist It is through the choices his people make that they become understandable, real and meaningful to us As Tnfonov has matured artistically, his characters have become more complex and their ethical dilemmas more difficult In his moral concern, he somewhat resembles Dostoevsky One of the major differences is that the 19th-century writer dealt with life-and-death issues, while Tnfonov focuses on the ethics of everyday existence Although the events are never extraordinary and the failings, weaknesses and betrayals of his characters are small-scale, the reader is never in doubt about what is right and what is wrong The question is, rather, whether the characters will know, care or have the strength to do what is right The stones Tnfonov published in the early 1970s, m the journal Novy Mir, provide a strikingly depressing description of modern urban Soviet life The atmosphere is suffocating, and the characters to a smaller or larger extent are repulsive The new Soviet man, educated or half-educated, is portrayed as being interested only in material possessions, he is completely without ideals Traditional values and ties are disappearing and there is nothing to take their place Corruption and hypocrisy are everywhere And if the older generations, produced by harsh conditions, are weak or corrupt, the young are depicted as monstrous A foreigner who wants to get the flavor of Moscow life, who wants to know the mentality of the citizens of the capital, could do no better than to read these stories In the last few years Tnfonov has published two major works Dom na naberezhnoi (House on the Embankment) and Stank (The OldMan) Both short novels appeared in the journal Druzhba narodov—the former in 1976, the latter in 1978—and are far more ambitious and effective than anything he has previously written His earlier stories were valuable because they gave us a believable picture of Soviet reality To be sure, they could be regarded as critical, but the criticism was constructive—materialism, fad-dishness and other unattractive traits were denounced Thus the early works did no more than to hold a mirror to the society In his two recent novels Peter Kenez, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is spending this academic year at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson Center Tnfonov has gone deeper He is now concerned with nothing less than the creation of Homo Sovieticus, with the inevitability of betrayal, corruption and moral weakness in modern Russia Being more profound, these works are also more political Their interpretation of Soviet history calls into question the very legitimacy of the present system Of the two, House on the Embankment is the more affecting It tells about the making of the career of a literary scholar, Glebov We learn a great deal about this character, yet the author is not particularly interested in recounting his life Tnfonov's concern, rather, is to examine the exact moments when morally reprehensible choices are made There is, of course, a large body of works in world literature dealing with the process of political corruption The Soviet writer's contribution to this opus is his unique description of both the outside circumstances and of the mind of the person who is being seduced His concentration on decisive situations, rather than on long-term developments, gives this brief novel the flavor of a short story The action is centered on two pivotal events, two turning points in Glebov's life The first takes place in 1937, when our hero is only 12 Because it is a child who is forced to make a choice, this episode is especially poignant Glebov's family lives near the apartment house on the embankment, a fabulous bastion of the privileged, consequently, some of his classmates are the sons and daughters of the elite Even in this company a certain new boy, Shulepmkov, stands out in the magnificence of his dress and the self-assurance of his manner Wanting to teach him a lesson, his classmates decide to beat him up But Shulepmkov knows how to take care of himself He pulls out a pistol—it turns out to be a German-made toy—that does not so much terrify as awe his attackers The director of the school, worried about the political implications of the event, makes every effort to get the names of the organizers Shulepmkov refuses to squeal and becomes a hero Soon he and Glebov are good friends and visit each others' homes The enormous contrast between the modest circumstances of Glebov's typical Soviet household and the fantastic luxury of Shulepmkov's apartment is a crucial aspect of the story When an uncle of Glebov is arrested, Glebov's mother, through the children, approaches Shulepmkov's father for help We learn bttle about the elder Shulepmkov's work, but the reader can guess that it is something sinister The next time the boys are playing chess at the Shulepmkovs the father asks Glebov into his office He tells the child that while he cannot promise anything, he will try to find out what happened to the uncle Then he adds a request He wants to know the names of the children who organized the attack on his son The 12-year old future scholar of literature reveals their identities How much Glebov hurt others by his betrayal is not clear and not very important, but there is no doubt he hurt himself The next time we meet Glebov he is a student at the University Through Soma, a girl who has always loved him, Glebov becomes close to his professor, Ganchuk, who happens to be Soma's father A daily visitor at the Ganchuks, who also live in the house on the embankment, Glebov himself is unclear whether he truly loves Soma or is only attracted to her for ulterior motives For he certainly enjoys dreaming of inheriting the Ganchuk's dacha and apartment The denouement soon follows The Professor's enemies at the Umversity want to get rid of him and they skillfully use Glebov as one of their instruments Glebov struggles like a hooked fish, but he can find no way out and once again becomes a traitor Ganchuk is sent to a provincial institute and his wife dies, Soma, a Dostoevski-an heroine of all-embracing compassion, and the most attractive character among Tnfonov's creations, goes mad Her only svmptom is that she cannot tolerate light Glebov, on the other hand, reaches the highest echelons of academic achievement We meet ton last m the 1970s, attending an international conference Tnfonov uses an interesting literary device in presenting Glebov's character The bulk of the novel is related by an impersonal narrator who sets out as good a case for Glebov as possible We are willing to make allowances for his materialism and envy because he is poor and surrounded by luxury, we are witting to forgive his transgressions as we realize that he is merely an agent m the hands of truly malevolent forces Sometimes, though, we hear another narrator—a classmate of Glebov, who loathes him and loves Soma He is not mterested in extenuating circumstances For him Glebov is a villain Clearly both of the narrators represent Tnfonov As an artist he understands his character and appreciates the difficulties, at the same tune, there is no doubt that whatever made Glebov into what he became, he is repulsive The Old Man, Tnfonov's latest novel, is perhaps his best The book successfully integrates two time frames the present and the period of the Civil War The sections dealing with current Soviet life take place in the summer of 1973 in a settlement of dachas outside Moscow The atmosphere, the problems and the characters are typical Tnfonov Pavel Letunov, a 73-year old man, is spending the summer with his grown children and their families The large Letunov family would like to acquire a larger dacha nearby that has just become empty through the death of its occupant, and this part of the plot revolves around the struggle for the dacha In Tnfonov's depiction of contemporary society there are basically two types of Soviet men the weak and the corrupt Here we are given the contrasting figures of Ruslan Letunov, Pavel's son, and Kandaurov, a Soviet functionary, who also wants the dacha Ruslan is weak He loses his job, he drinks too much, he does not get along with his w ite 'i et he is also an attractive person Middle-aged and suffering from heart trouble, he nevertheless volunteers to fight a forest fire, endangering his life Kandaurov, by contrast, is totally despicable He uses others for his own purposes, is without scruples and is so corrupt that he cannot conceive that someone else might not be While Ruslan has lost his job, Kandaurov is just about to accept an attractive assignment abroad Pavel Letunov is an unwilling fighter for the dacha He attempts to use his influence only for the sake of his family and at their repeated urgmgs, but his mind is elsewhere Specifically, he is preoccupied with an episode that occurred during the Civil War His narrative of the distant past contains two distinct dramas The first is the event itself We become acquainted with the Cossack leader, S K Miguhn, who, without becoming a Bolshevik, threw in his lot with them He was a man of heroic proportions an instinctive revolutionary, a fearless fighter and a charismatic leader For all that, the Bolsheviks did not trust him He was removed from his native Don, and when the need was so great that he had to be brought back, his enemies conspired against him Miguhn is clearly based on F K Mrronov, who was recently resurrected for us by Roy Medvedev Trifonov is a good historian, and his reconstruction of the events and mood of 1919 is accurate (But it should be noted that a reader who learns the history of the Civil War from this book will not understand why the Bolsheviks' experience of cooperation with unruly leaders such as Gngorev and Makhno made them understandably cautious about trusting people like Mironov) Other central characters include Dan-llov, Letunov's maternal uncle, and Shigontsev, both Bolsheviks Damlov is a positive hero He is totally devoted to his cause and sees the purpose of the Revolution as improving the life of the people To him it is a contradiction in terms to perpetrate injustice m the name of revolution Miguhn and Dan-llov, naturally, trust and respect one another Shigontsev, an old comrade of Damlov in exile, is dogmatic, he is willing to sacrifice anything and anybody in the name of misconstrued principles It is people like Shigontsev who ultimately destroy Miguhn The second drama, which is even more interesting than the first, involves Pavel Letunov's struggle with his memories The young Letunov was present at Migulin's trial and had been in love with Migulin's wife, who was his childhood friend When he was asked by the investigator whether he could entertain the thought that Miguhn had participated in a counterrevolutionary rising, Letunov answered yes It is this episode, festering in the back of Letunov's mind, that accounts for his great interest in the Miguhn affair By intertwining the present and the past Trifonov makes some unpleasant points He clearly does not like Shigontsev and his ilk, yet must admit that those people were genuinely motivated by high ideals and were willing to accept sacrifice for their principles How very different the present is' Modern Soviet man can talk about world revolution only as a joke, he would not take ideology seriously even for a moment Tnfonov despises the materialism of his contemporaries, and in the age-old dispute between fathers and sons he wholeheartedly sides with the old There is a basic and rather obvious irony here Only Tsansm produced decent, strong and high-minded men Another aspect of the relationship between the two time periods is the relevance of the past for the present Nothing is more important to the old man than knowing whether he had reason to suspect Miguhn of counterrevolutionary tendencies He searches for an answer to the question Why did Miguhn in August 1919 disregard orders and take his troops to the front9 To be sure, he has private reasons for his curiosity, yet the truth is important not just for him alone, but for the entire Soviet society In a crucial scene of the novel a casual visitor hits the nail on the head when he asks Pavel Letunov whether he feels guilty before the memory of Miguhn Letunov is overcome by emotion and answers passionately No, he is not guilty before Miguhn, but before all others, for not having revealed the truth Trifonov thus implies that there can be no overcoming corruption, no building a decent and healthy society without facing the past honestly, a most subversive notion in modern day Russia What is more, Trifonov affirms again and again the responsibility of the individual for large and small crimes, and even for silence in face of injustice That Tnfonov could publish House on the Embankmentand The Old Man is remarkable, for there certainly has been no general relaxation of censorship in the Soviet Union Writers who recently attempted to bring out a fairly tame collection, Metropol, quickly found themselves in trouble, historians who treat Stalinism and the Revolution continue to concede nothing to truth One can only speculate about Tnfonov's ability to issue works that strike at the very heart of the regime Maybe his considerable reputation is protecting him, maybe the fact that his writings only gradually became critical has misled the censors, maybe he has friends in powerful circles who come to his aid Whatever the case, the Tnfonov phenomenon shows that Russians are sometimes allowed to read some very subversive books One more thought comes to mind reading Trifonov—illegitimate as it may be from the point of view of literary analysis the autobiographical significance of these novels We know that the author's father was a prominent leader in the Civil War and that Un grew up in considerable luxury As Glebov was denouncing his professor, Trifonov was writing his Stalin Prize-winning novel Could it be, then, that these works are, at least in part, a penance for remaining silent9 Pavel Letunov, though a man of a different generation, very likely speaks for the author when he confesses his guilt of silence After all, Solzherutsyn's soul was saved by being arrested, but what about the consciences of those who prospered at such diabolic times9...