Some Educational Themes in the Works of Vladimir Tendryakov

Abstract

It has long been known that sometimes additional, and often more revealing, information about some aspects of the Soviet scene can be gleaned from Soviet belles-lettres than from official documentation or guided visits. While this is particularly true of collective farm life, it may be somewhat less so of education. Nevertheless it is in the hope that this approach may be of some use to educationists that these lines are written. Vladimir Tendryakov is a Soviet writer who has achieved prominence since the mid-fifties. He published a few stories during Stalin's lifetime but, like so many others, gained impetus for his particular commentary on Soviet society from the loosening of controls after the dictator's departure. Tendryakov is a native of the northern zone of Russia and it is this region that provides the setting for much of his work. The themes that form the framework for his writing are life in the collective farm countryside and small provincial towns; the relationship between the Party and the people in these areas, the Party's efforts to mould their social-political consciousness; the inevitable conflict between urban influences and pressures and traditional modes of thought in the countryside [1]; and lastly, the education, academic and moral, of the young, with some reference to the religious influences that still impinge on this process. Subsumed beneath these themes, however, is the author's deep and abiding interest in ordinary human relationships, in particular how these have been affected by the trauma of the Stalin period, by the institutionalization of suffering, and how they are now evolving since the loosening of the social fabric. It is Tendryakov's attempt to sustain his integrity as a writer and a human being in his exploration of these relationships in their natural settings that gives his work its inner tension and cohesion. The writings of Tendryakov that lean heavily on the rural school situation are in chronological order: In Pursuit of the Fleeting Day (1959), a full length novel; An Extraordinary Occurrence (1961), a novella; and The Night after Graduation (1974), a novella. The Miracle-Working Icon (1958), a novella, deals with the clash between a Soviet schoolmistress and religious elements in the countryside, but is peripheral to the school theme [2]. In other works, in particular The Meeting with Nefertiti [3] there is some portrayal of life in art institutes and colleges, but these writings lie outside the scope of the present topic. The hero of Tendryakov's major novel In Pursuit of the Fleeting Day is a young war veteran, Andrei Biryukov, who scrapes into art school largely because of his outspokenness at the final interview and the fact that he is an ex-serviceman, finds himself unsuited, leaves and drifts into the teaching profession. He marries while in college, gets a job teaching Russian at a rural secondary school and settles down with his wife, also a teacher, to a life of family contentment. Biryukov