Correspondents' Correspondence Soviet Text
EDGERTON, WILLIAM B.
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Soviet Text Bloomington??For decades secondary schools...
...had influenced his revolutionary development more than any other literary work...
...Soviet textbooks also often quote the words of the Bulgarian Communist leader Georgy Dimitrov, who said that What Is to be Done...
...With each passing year," the spirit says, "the people??you Russians ??are pushing the desert further back toward the south...
...In 1975 Soviet sources listed translations of What Is to be Done...
...A 1951 Soviet edition of the complete novel even inserts a footnote here to explain that "this refers to the Arabian desert...
...Chernyshevsky leaves no doubt in the mind of his reader about the exact location of New Russia...
...Yes, from the great northeastern river the whole expanse to the south, halfway down the peninsula, is green and flourishing...
...A mediocre work of art largely ignored in the West, the novel was written and published in 1863 by N. G. Chernyshevsky, while he was in jail for revolutionary activities and just before he was exiled to Siberia for 19 years...
...Soviet Text Bloomington??For decades secondary schools throughout the Soviet Union have included in their required reading programs an episode from the novel, What Is to be Done?, in which the heroine has a vision of a future "New Russia" on the territory of present-day Saudi Arabia...
...But there is a special land in the south where the great majority of you go...
...The one English edition published in this century is an abbreviated reprint of a wretched version made in the 1880s from a French translation...
...And among its numerous omissions is the chapter about Vera Pavlovna's dream of a New Russia on the sands of what is today Saudi Arabia.??William B. Edcer-ton...
...in 40 European and Asian languages but none in Arabic...
...But aren't we in the middle of a desert...
...This land is called New Russia...
...Yes," the spirit replies, "in the middle of what used to be a desert...
...Arab readers will not find it easy to learn about Chernyshevsky's dream of making a Russian paradise out of their desert...
...Nor is Chernyshevsky's novel readily available in English...
...Others are working on other lands...
...More than half a century later Lenin praised the book extravagantly, declaring that it had not only inspired him and his elder brother, who was executed by the Tsarist government in 1887 for attempting to assassinate Alexander III, but had turned hundreds of its readers into revolutionaries...
...it is bounded on the east "by a long and broad gulf??obviously the Persian Gulf??and on the west by "a long, narrow gulf??the Red Sea...
...Vera Pavlovna is then taken inside one of these "crystal palaces," as Chernyshevsky calls them, and is shown how the inhabitants of the New Russia will spend their leisure hours??singing in choirs, playing in orchestras, going to lectures, visiting museums, reading in libraries, or simply walking about the earthly paradise in their flowing Grecian robes...
...Vera Pavlovna asks...
...Chernyshevsky's vision of what is in store for the Arabian peninsula is described to Vera Pavlovna in her dream...
...In the excerpt that is read in Soviet schools, a spirit appears in a dream to the heroine, Vera Pavlovna, and shows her a Russian Utopia lying to the south of the strip of land "that was said in olden times to be flowing with milk and honey"??a clear reference to ancient Israel...
...In Russia proper during the summer, says the spirit, "you receive many guests, helpers in your work [migrant laborers?], but for the seven or eight bad months of your year you yourselves go south??everyone wherever he pleases...
...It is a former desert, narrow at the north and widening toward the south...
...The spirit goes on to explain that the Russians have diverted the waters of "the big river to the northeast"??the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq??in order to turn the Arabian desert into a garden spot...
...Over the whole territory stand enormous buildings, just as in the north, two or three miles apart from each other, like huge chessmen on a gigantic chessboard...
...According to the spirit, the territory will be covered with date palms, fig bushes and rich plantations of coffee, wheat, rice, and sugar cane...
...There is plenty of room and enough work for everybody to live in comfort and abundance...
Vol. 63 • March 1980 • No. 5
