TRUTHFUL DREAMS OF ANDREY ARZHILOVSKIY: FROM A 1936-1937 DIARY OF A MAN SENTENCED TO DEATH

Abstract

The paper is based on the description of dreams laid down in a 1936-1937 diary of a Siberian village dweller Andrey S. Arzhilovskiy. Andrey S. Arzhilovskiy (1885-1937) was a prominent representative of peasants’ intelligentsia of the late empire period, whose interests extended beyond breadwinning: being engaged in volost paperwork, he composed articles and satire for local newspapers, recounted folk customs and rites, and occasionally kept a thoughts’ journal. For being involved in the work of a uyezd administration, he was first convicted in 1920 before being granted amnesty in 1922 and convicted for the second time in 1929, the latter sentence having led to over seven years of camp imprisonment. During this period, Arzhilovskiy has kept a diary, noting all his mundane observations, parenting turmoil, and doubts concerning a newly-established pattern of life and thought. The description of night dreams constitutes an important part of this egodocument which brought its author into scandalous limelight when it was partially published in the U.S. in 1995 and, at the same time, gave rise to the interpretation of key signs and symbols of individual and public history. Remarkably, this diary came to arise as grounds for its owner’s guilty verdict pursuant to his life ended in the NKVD confines in 1937.