Valentin Kataev Research Articles

The Music to Valentin Kataev’s Fairy Tale The Wishing Seven-Colored Flower in the Space of Russia’s and China’s Screen Culture

The present article focuses on music in the space of screen culture. It discusses the interpretation of Valentin Kataev’s fairy tale The Wishing Seven-Colored Flower [Tsvetik-Semitsvetik] that was presented in the following artistic projects: a) the short television film The Wishing Seven-Colored Flower, created in the late 1960s through the collaboration of composer Evgeny Krylatov, directors Garnik Arazyan and Boris Bushmelev; b) the animated film with the same title by Russian and Soviet director Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Soviet composer Yuri Levitin (released in 1948); c) the animated film by Chinese director Cao Xiaohui and Chinese composer Lu Shiling (1974), whose title retains also a similarity to the original source title. In regard to Krylatov’s and his colleagues’ film, addressed to a children’s audience, analyzing the interaction between the musical component of the film text, the video sequence, and the verbal-plot sequence clearly reveals Krylatov brilliant talent, his professionalism in the field of orchestral style and symphonic dramaturgy, as well as the organic synthesis of his inherent modern thinking — one that is recognizable by his composition techniques, as well as the traditions of the Russian musical classics. In a similar way, Yuri Levitin’s music carries out a dramaturgical function when accompanying animate films, while demonstrating elements of contemporary compositional means (namely, the aleatory technique). Modern compositional techniques also appear in Lu Shiling’s music, making themselves present in the texture of clusters as the main elements of sonorical sound. However, in contrast to the work of his Russian colleagues, the latter’s music carries out a purely illustrative function in the animated film.

Specific features of the plot construction in V. Kataev’s stories “The Lonely Sail Is White” and “The Son of the Regiment”

The article examines different options for the interaction of children’s literature and the literature of the large canon plot models in the works of Valentin Kataev. The object of the study is two of his stories: the first part of the tetralogy “Waves of the Black Sea” – “The Lonely Sail Is White” and “The Son of the Regiment”.The first story is distinguished by a fairly obvious orientation towards the model of the Revolution conceptualization that developed at the turn of the 1910s and 1920s. The mystery model determines the nature of the plot construction, forming a certain internal plot, presented by the mythologemes of “Red Easter”/ “Working Easter” and “sails”. The mythologems are built along two storylines in the parallel development, at the end of the story they charge the ideological load of the traditional romantic image with a mysterious meaning.The second story is characterized by its inclusion into the mythology of the “big family” being constructed at this stage. This is associated with a shift in a psychologically grounded plot action towards epicization, which is embodied in the accentuated archetypal component. The mythologeme of the “big family” is presented in the work in the context of ideological connotations common to the given time and is realized at all levels of the text: its plot, characters, images and chronotops. As a result, the nature of temporal conceptualization changes: the mysterious processuality of time gives way to temporal circularity.

Комедия В. П. Катаева «Время, вперед!»: художественный образ главного героя в контексте вариантов произведения

The article studies the variants of Valentin Kataev’s comedy Time, forward! in order to identify edits that influenced the author’s expression and the reader’s perception of the image of the main character. While researching comedy variants, it was found that the authors interested in Kataev’s work avoided the comedy Time, forward!. In our opinion, knowing about the corrections of the text of the play, Soviet critics, guided by political correctness, did not dare to engage in public polemics and literary-critical discussion around the famous writer. In the post-Soviet period, Kataev’s dramaturgy lost its relevance, did not kindle the interest of specialists. This study was conducted on the material of the comedy editions published during the author’s lifetime. Its relevance is justified by establishing the originality of the image of the main character of the main version of the work, reflecting the characters, emotions and feelings of people of its era. As part of the sample analysis it was found that by making corrections to the climactic scenes of the ending of the 1934 play, the author leaves the plot, the sequence of scenes, the system of images, the general idea of the work unchanged. During the comparison of the variants of the work, the edits made by the author to the two scenes of the finale were revealed. These scenes, connecting with the preceding scene, create a single plot and ideological and emotional node of the climax of the work. The image of the characters and the hero acquire a completely different appearance. With the appearance of comedy in public and up to the present, it has been believed that the image of the main character is a passionate and uncompromising fighter for the communist attitude to work. The edits revealed in the study in the version of the comedy of 1934, without dismissing the hero’s struggle for the result, a high pace in the socialist competition, indicate self-assertion of personality: high morality, friendly feelings. The image of the communist hero, which did not correspond to the literary and political canon, caused acute criticism and was the reason for suppressing the work. The results of the study give ground to consider the version of the play Time, forward! of 1934, a valuable source reflecting the characters, emotions and feelings of the heroes of its time.

Rethinking Prokofiev by McAllister Rita (review)

REVIEWS 353 McAllister, Rita and Guillaumier, Christina (eds). Rethinking Prokofiev. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2020. xxxvii + 506 pp. Illustrations. Music examples. Tables. Notes. Glossary. Index. £81.00;£29.99. This survey of Prokof´ev’s life and work is not only excellent per se, but also very timely, in that the pioneering study of the early years by David Nice appeared as long ago as 2003. There is a strong team of contributors who have all produced clear and detailed analyses, shedding new light on many aspects of the composer, including comprehensive annotation and, where necessary, cross-referencing. A particularly welcome addition to the notes is a companion website, www.oup.com/us/rethinkingprokofiev, which provides musical examples and other illustrations, complementing the apparatus in the book. The editors in time plan to expand this website, but what is unusual is that readers too ‘are invited to offer relevant supplementary information and insights by e-mail: rethinkingprokofiev@gmail.com’ (p. xvii). The contributions are divided into six parts: 1. ‘Prokofiev and the Russian Models’, in which Marina Radu deals mainly with the nineteenth century, Patrick Zuk with the composer and the development of Soviet composition in the 1920s and 1930s, and Daniel Tooke with Prokof´ev and the Soviet symphony; 2. ‘Prokofiev and His Contemporaries’ — Marina Frolova-Walker discusses the composer in the French context and particularly his concern to match Stravinskii in status, Ivana Medić writes interestingly of the two-way influence between Prokof´ev and Shostakovich, and Nelly Kravetz discusses the relationship between the composer and his friend Levon Atovmian, who, it is suggested, was the main instigator of his return to Russia; 3. ‘Music and Text: Prokofiev’s Relationship with His Literary Sources’. Here Polina Dimova discusses in particular his interest in Silver Age poetry which she relates to his Christian Science beliefs; she also provides some insights into Diaghilev’s rejection of Ala and Lolli. Nicolas Moron discusses the complex publication history of one of Prokof´ev’s major works, Seven, They Are Seven. Julia Khait writes about his film music, not only the masterpieces but also more conventional works written during World War Two, suggesting that for him there was no conceptual division between music for film and concert music: ‘integration of this type is one of the richer secrets of his talent’ (p. 191). Finally in this part, Terry Dean compares his work on Semion Kotko with the author of the original story, Valentin Kataev, and the twelve years spent on War and Peace, helped by Mira Mendelson; 4. ‘Drama and Gesture’ — Jane Pritchard notes that few of Prokof´ev’s early ballets were performed, although he was able to adapt the music for later works. Christina Guillaumier discusses his fascination and persistence with opera, despite many setbacks. Katya Ermolaeva writes about Ivan the Terrible and how Eizenshtein’s mastery of SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 354 using diegetic music helped the composer in one of his most important film scores. Natalia Savkina provides an introduction to Prokof´ev’s thanatology, from the happy finale of Romeo and Juliet (anticipated in Maddalena) to War and Peace; 5. ‘Identity and Structure’, in which Christina Guillaumier offers a genealogy of Prokof´ev’s musical gestures from his early Pesen´ki to the later works,aconnectionofwhichhewaswellaware.BorisBermandiscussesthefive piano concertos in an excellent analysis based on his earlier (2008) book on the subject, highlighting traditional and innovative features, and the composer’s attitude to classical dance movements. Rita McAllister makes a preliminary study of Prokof´ev’s fascinating notebooks, which date from 1919 to the year of his death, suggesting that, on their evidence, throughout his life he was more interested in creating music than in the final result. Konrad Harley offers an analysis of the composer’s middle period, showing how the multiple changes of pitch and variation in harmonic function have led some, mistakenly, to ascribe atonality to a number of his works; 6. ‘The Reception and Afterlife of the Music’. Joseph Schulz shows how the insularity of English newspapers in the first decades of the century led to his being widely misunderstood. David G. Tompkins, in the most political of the articles...

Prokofiev's Soviet Operas by Nathan Seinen

Reviewed by: Prokofiev's Soviet Operas by Nathan Seinen Terry L. Dean Prokofiev's Soviet Operas. By Nathan Seinen. (Music since 1900.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. [xiv, 255 p. ISBN 9781107088788 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781107460799 (paperback), $29; ISBN 9781316105214 (e-book), $140.] Music examples, tables, bibliography, index. Sergey Prokofiev dedicated considerable time and creative energy to the composition of opera. An avid reader and lover of literature, the composer revered opera above all other genres, contributing twelve works (eight mature) over the course of his career, [End Page 257] with opera projects extending from his childhood to the final years of his life. In part, it was his love for opera that motivated Prokofiev to return to the Soviet Union in 1936. The Stalinist state's sponsorship of opera and the prospect of a flourishing opera career appealed to him greatly. Unfortunately, the composer's plans did not work out as he had anticipated. Indeed, his status as a seasoned opera composer frequently served as an obstacle for him as he began work in a vastly different Russia from the one he had left nearly twenty years earlier. Nevertheless, Prokofiev completed four operas during his years as a repatriated Soviet composer—Semyon Kotko (Semën Kotko; 1939), Betrothal in a Monastery (Obruchenie v monastyre; 1940/43), War and Peace (Voĭna i mir; 1941–52), and The Story of a Real Man (Povest' o nastoi͡ashchem cheloveke; 1947–48). In Prokofiev's Soviet Operas, Nathan Seinen sets out to examine Prokofiev's four Soviet operas in a multitude of different contexts using a wide variety of resources, including score manuscripts, draft materials for each opera, and the composer's various notebooks as well as a number of Russian-language sources from disciplines such as film studies, history, literary criticism, and sociology. Seinen explores the works from their inception through their critical reception, with particular emphasis on understanding their individual ideological contexts and to "place them in within the wider frame of Soviet cultural history" (p. 4). What emerges is an assessment of Prokofiev's struggle for creative autonomy at a time when collaboration was promoted as an essential component of the creative process and frequently placed the composer in conflict with the demands of socialist realism as espoused by the State Committee on the Arts (forerunner of the Ministry of Culture). Ultimately, Seinen argues that "with all the pressures that were applied to opera composition under Stalin, it is remarkable how 'un-Soviet' all four of Prokofiev's late operas actually are" (p. 18). Undeniably, Prokofiev's efforts to compose operas that would appeal to international audiences served as a major obstacle to his success as a Soviet opera composer who was expected first and foremost to serve the state. Throughout the text, Seinen examines each work individually, emphasizing their role as independent cultural artifacts. As such, each chapter serves not only as a chronicle of its respective opera but also as a case study of Prokofiev's developing identity as a Soviet composer, the ever-evolving demands of socialist realism, and the complexities of high and late Stalinist aesthetics. Each work is revealed to be malapropos when considered against the expectations of Soviet aesthetics. In selecting the source for his first Soviet opera, for example, Prokofiev chose to set Valentin Kataev's I, Son of the Working People (͡IA, syn trudovogo naroda; 1937), which explored its Soviet subject matter through its setting in Bolshevik Ukraine during a period of German occupation. The novella had been reprinted multiple times and had been adapted twice for the stage as well as for film. Thus, Kataev's story seemed an ideal choice and to be an assured success. Nevertheless, Prokofiev's emphasis on action over affect, focus on the individual rather than the collective, and over-engagement with the humor of Kataev's story rendered the opera inappropriate in the eyes of critics and opened the opera to comparison by the Committee on Arts Affairs with Tikhon Khrennikov's Into the Storm (V buri͡u; 1939), which ultimately received the Party's (and Stalin's) official endorsement over Prokofiev's opera. Seinen's study also provides exciting new ways of understanding...

‘Poems unspelled’: on Georgy Obolduev’s early poetry

In her interview with S. Shargunov, editor-in-chief of the Yunost magazine, a writer and a public figure, the critic T. Solovyova raises various problems and questions. Among these are questions of contemporary literature, which, Shargunov believes, relies too much on the principles of stability and elegance, and needs some kind of a shock; the fate of thick literary magazines, which no longer can survive in a Soviet reservation and have started to actively explore the world around them; and the principles of biographical research, which is largely based on the invention of the protagonist, etc. The interview is concerned with Shargunov’s own prose, including his biographical novel about Valentin Kataev, his first experience in serious research, as well as works by Shargunov’s contemporaries, including authors of the same age. At the same time, the interview deliberately avoids politics and ideology; it does not discuss Shargunov’s activities as a people’s representative in the State Duma.

Дилогия об Остапе Бендере: О чем умолчали авторы

The article refines the plot source of the novel “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. The author puts forward a reasoned hypothesis according to which the list of sources traditionally mentioned by researchers consists not only of works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Lev Lunts and Aron Erlikh, but may as well include the court report signed “A. Trol” and published in the “Gudok” newspaper in February 1927. The pseudonym “A. Trol” was used by the poet, translator, critic and poetry scholar Georgy Shengeli during his 1925 – 1928 period of work in “Gudok”. The article questions the believability of a well-known story stating that the basic storyline of the novel was granted to Ilf and Petrov by Valentin Kataev. The plot of the chapter “The End of the Crow’s Nest” from the novel “The Little Golden Calf”, according to the author, is entirely borrowed from the court report by “A. Trol”, published in “Gudok” in October 1926. Boris Flit’s critical essay published in “Gudok” in August 1928 is proposed to be considered the first review of “The Twelve Chairs”; Flit was eventually imprisoned and executed. In the penultimate section of the article a possible origin of the protagonist’s surname is specified: supposedly, Ostap gained his surname from a pseudonym of a “Gudok” worker correspondent. Thus, observations and conclusions presented in the article make significant adjustments to the study of the creative history of Ilf and Petrov’s dilogy.

Cadrin, Paul and Downes, Stephen (eds) The Szymanowski Companion (review)

SEER, 95, 2, APRIL 2017 356 book, on p. 212.) Indeed, the gushing reports on, for example, the rapidly growing ‘American’ city of Tel-Aviv brought to mind the breathless style of innumerable Soviet novels such as Valentin Kataev’s Vremia vpered — the feeling that time was on the side of those who were building a new and better future, whether for Soviet or for Jewish citizens. Read, for example, Gershon Svet’s private letter of 1935: ‘Tel-Aviv is growing literally by the hour, if not by the minute. Everyone is in a cheerful, happy mood. You rarely meet so many people in a good frame of mind as you do here. Of course, there are whingers as well, but they are mainly losers, who, in Tel-Aviv, look just like their opposite numbers in Riga’ (p. 214; see also pp. 204–09). (Nonetheless, Mr Svet chose to live in Jerusalem.) This future-projected similarity, however superficial, may help to explain the general widespread reluctance of Jews in Palestine and, later, in Israel to be overly critical of the Kremlin (a rare exception, in 1932, is described on pp. 202–03). There was definitely a Russian non-Jewish presence in Palestine, as shown, i.a., by the lectures given in Russian (and interpreted into Hebrew) in 1935 by the Socialist-Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov (pp. 212–13) and by the 1937 complete translation of Evgenii Onegin by Avraam Shlenskii, born in Ukraine, who also translated Gogol´, Blok, Mandel´shtam and Pasternak into Hebrew (pp. 221–22). Although it would have benefited from a bit more editing by someone with native English, this is a very worthwhile book, and we should be grateful not only to its editors, but also to the editors at Stanford Slavic Studies, for publishing it. Department of Slavonic Studies Martin Dewhirst University of Glasgow Cadrin, Paul and Downes, Stephen (eds). The Szymanowski Companion. Ashgate,FarnhamandBurlington,VT,2015.xxii+301pp.Musicexamples. Tables. Notes. List of works. Chronology. Bibliography. Indexes. £70.00. What do we understand by a musical Companion: a fireside guide for the informed layman, or an academic’s round-up of recent interpretative scholarship? Paul Cadrin and Stephen Downes, editors of The Szymanowski Companion, could hardly be clearer: in the wake of a burgeoning Szymanowski literature involving a number of different interpretative and analytical approaches, their aim is ‘to provide a text that is the first port of call for English readers, both the professional scholar and the musically trained amateur enthusiast’ (p. xvii). The task sounds daunting but their alphabetic layout, dazzling the reader with juxtapositions such as ‘Dance, Death, Dedicatees’ REVIEWS 357 or ‘Piano Music, Politics, Rhythm’, proves practical, and the narrow angle of some of these headings can be fruitful. ‘Dedicatees’, for instance, brings together biographical detail that one would long hunt for elsewhere. Many of the contributors are familiar to the English-speaking Szymanowski enthusiast.TeresaChylińskahasbeenentrustedwithbiographicalinformation; the editors and Alistair Wightman share chapters on analysis and aesthetic issues; and a further, international group of scholars contribute items on specific aspects of Szymanowski’s oeuvre, his writings and travels abroad. There is naturally some overlap, as between the two chapters concerning Szymanowski’s musical and aesthetic debt to Chopin, or between genre-based and analytical chapters centring on the same works. The more musically detailed chapters succeed in illuminating works one thought one knew, in unpretentious analytical language mildly spiced (in the case of Downes’s ‘Sonata Forms’) with references to Hepokoskian sonata deformation theory. Sometimes one senses that the writers have been obliged by considerations of space to close the door on unexplored avenues. This adds to the appeal of the book, in the event, as one is inspired to explore for oneself. Certain themes recur. Szymanowski’s apparent aesthetic shift circa 1914, when he outgrew his Germanic influences and embraced French music, Hellenism and Orientalism, is central for many. It yielded some of his most characteristic music, of which Symphony no. 3 (‘Song of the Night’), the Mythes and the First Violin Concerto, composed in the incredibly fertile years from 1914 to 1916, are the first point of attraction for many Szymanowskians. Some observers see a further shift...

Fast Forward: The Aesthetics of Speed in Russian Avant-Garde Culture, 1910–1930 by Tim Harte, and: Towards Mobility: Varieties of Automobilism in East and West by Corinna Kuhr-Korolev and Dirk Schlinkert, and: Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile by Lewis H. Siegelbaum (review)

Tim Harte, Fast Forward: The Aesthetics of Speed in Russian Avant-Garde Culture, 1910-1930. 328 pp. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0299233242. $29.95. Corinna Kuhr-Korolev and Dirk Schlinkert, eds., Towards Mobility: Varieties of Automobilism in East and West. 220 pp. Wolfsburg: Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft, 2009. ISBN-13 978-3935112345. 24.90 [euro]. Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile. 328 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. ISBN-13 978-0801446382. $49.95. Reviewing two volumes on cars together with Harte's study on speed in early Soviet art proves to be quite challenging, since neither of the car volumes refers to the more abstract symbolic meanings of mobility, speed, and advancement, whereas Harte never mentions the Soviet car industry. Yet the books seem to have an important common denominator: progress. (1) The term was coined in an era when industrialization proceeded in parallel with social emancipation in many European countries. Freedom of the spirit, scientific innovation, and technological advancement would help humanity dominate the forces of nature and bring about a glorious future. Ever since, discourses on progress are characterized by the motifs of mobility, speed, and social dynamics. In Fast Forward, Tim Harte explores the speed cult of the Russian avantgarde and the early Soviet era. By linking different types of art such as painting, poetry, and film, the book aims to trace the far-reaching aesthetization of speed. Harte regards the notion of acceleration as fundamental to his period of analysis (1910-30). This cult of speed, based in the futurism of 1909, was the leitmotif of the modern era. Critics of modernization regarded the rapidly growing cities of the industrial as incubators of diseases such as hysteria and of general human degeneration. For them, speed represented a particular danger for the body and soul, and they proclaimed an age of nervousness. (2) For others, speed signified the overcoming of space and time, as it was associated with the future and social utopias. Scientific insights such as the idea of the speed of light figured large in artistic works. Speed-induced blurred vision enabled better (in)sight. (3) Both lyric poetry (Blaise Cendrars) and the performing arts (Robert Delaunay) dealt with speed. Just as perception of the landscape changed while riding fast on the train, so film transformed the possibilities of vision. The linking of the locomotive, landscape, and speed was a frequent motif in poetry (David Burliuk) and in avant-garde cinema. The train figured as a mechanical double for silent cinema and as an ideological symbol of the proficient means of communication and transportation that Soviet society hoped to achieve (214). Harte guides us through the films of the avant-garde, in particular those of Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Viktor Turin. The Express as a harbinger of revolution leads us into the new era, exemplified by the film Turksib (1929). In his conclusion, Harte uses a close reading of Valentin Kataev's 1932 novel Vremia, vperea! (Time, Forward!) to draw a distinction between the avant-garde and Socialist Realism. In the era of the five-year plans, speed was incorporated into a Stalinist model of modernization through purposeful progress. This linear approach, Harte argues, had little in common with the dynamic and experimental concepts of speed of the avant-garde. In this regard, Harte differs from Boris Groys, who highlights the motif of speed as a linking theme between the avant-garde and Stalinism. Accounts of the hypermodern were accompanied by forms of extreme mobility, and not only in the science fiction works of Aldous Huxley and Evgenii Zamiatin. Speed meant progress but also success: it came to signify individual advancement. In today's societies, the car is the closest we have to a universal symbol of individual advancement and status. …

Suffering and Seeing in Kataev's <em>Vremia, vpered!</em>

Valentin Kataev's fascination with the idea of a revolutionary temporality in his classic Socialist Realist novel, Vremia vpered! (Time, Forward!, 1932), allies him not only with literary colleagues such as Maiakovskii, but with European modernism in general. Yet time is not what this book is really about; neither is it about the equally prominent motif of labour as holy suffering. Instead, it is a third overarching theme that emerges as decisive in Vremia vpered! This is another typically modernist concern, that of the subjective perception of reality. The suffering of Kataev's worker-heroes, together with false perceptions of its significance, relate to the theme of distorted perception, through which they must struggle to learn the correct way of seeing. The metaphor of revolutionary time conveys the experience of those who have succeeded in this struggle, and view the new reality in its true dimensions.

Human Machines and the Pains of Penmanship in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s <i>We</i>

Human Machines and the Pains of Penmanship in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We Julia Vaingurt (bio) Man loves creating and the making of roads, that is indisputable. But why does he so passionately love destruction and chaos as well? . . . In short, man is comically arranged, there is apparently a joke in all this. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground Shortly after the nascent Soviet government consolidated its power and launched a program of rapid industrialization, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We (1920) scandalously questioned the validity of techno-scientific instrumentality, a central principle of societal transformation in Soviet Russia. The first major work of fiction to be censored by the new regime, the novel was smuggled to the West, translated into English, and became an ur-text of twentieth-century science fiction, in particular standing, alongside Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, as progenitor of a new anti-utopian subgenre warning of the mass cultural homogenization of humanity in the name of progress. Set in a future totalitarian OneState, the novel records the internal conflict and gradual self-awakening of the initially robotlike rocket engineer D-503, torn between his faith in state orthodoxy and yearning for perfect order, on the one hand, and, on the other, his growing awareness of his own disorderly, irrepressible, idiosyncratic subjectivity. The catalyst of this subversive development is the act of writing—paradoxical insofar as this act functions, in the totalitarian system envisioned by the novel, as one of the instruments of the state’s all-pervasive control. In this essay, I will discuss how Zamyatin, in the process of critiquing the man-machine ideal espoused in Soviet political culture, reconceptualizes the very meaning of technology in human life.1 [End Page 108] The “Question Concerning Technology” and Its Soviet Context Broadly speaking, twentieth-century cultural responses to the power and expansion of technology foregrounded either the utopia of peaceful human coexistence with and benefit from machines or the dystopia of machine-wrought destruction. In Soviet Russia, intent on quickly overcoming its backwardness and marginal status vis-à-vis the West with the help of machinery at times conceived almost as magical, the predominant mode of relating to technology was emphatically utopic. The wishful thinking of utopian writers was counterbalanced by the paranoid prophesies of dystopians, who envisioned machines turning their power against humanity in a struggle for autonomy. One of the most influential of the technological dystopias, the Czech writer Karel Capek’s drama R.U.R. (1921), left an ominous stamp on Western culture in the form of the word “robot.” Here robots, work machines with an uncanny likeness to humans, in the spirit of rational self-interest they embody, rebel against their subservient status and destroy humanity.2 The vicissitudes of Capek’s plot, however, rely upon the same conception of technology as that of the “dreamer in the Kremlin” Lenin in his utopian aspirations for the Soviet future;3 in either case, it is a tool for political-industrial transformation, for ill or good.4 Zamyatin’s anti-utopian novel establishes a counterpoint to the purely instrumental technologies conceived by technophiles and tech-nophobes alike insofar as the author consistently deprives technology of its defining characteristic in Industrial Age culture, namely, its functionality.5 In its place, We imbues technology with various human traits, transforming machines into great vehicles for reflection. As opposed to the aspirations of Soviet “new men” to become machines, Zamyatin’s text features “reflexive technologies” in which pure instrumentality is marred by human idiosyncrasies.6 In this effort to aesthetically reassess technological potential, to view technology as a medium for contemplation rather than societal change, Zamyatin’s We takes its place within a canon of artistic works that responded to technological advancement with an urge not to exploit but to explore. In the Russian context, for example, Valentin Kataev’s The Sovereign of Iron (1924) features machines that exercise their newly acquired independence from humans by resisting violence, refusing to participate [End Page 109] in mankind’s wars; Velimir Khlebnikov’s “Ourselves and Our Buildings: Creators of Streetsteads” (1914) and other futurist manifestos espouse organic technologies starkly contrasting with the aesthetics of mechanized humanity; and...

"As Many Street Cops as Corners": Displacing 1905 in the Pinkertons

AbstractRenewed popular interest in the Pinkertonovshchina – pre-Revolutionary, Western-styled detective fiction – invites a closer look at this fascinating phenomenon. An examination of the original serial's reception among young readers holds out clues to the psychological motivations of those who devour popular cultural genres in times of social flux. Memoirs and letters by Valentin Kataev (1897-1986), Leonid Borisov (1897-1972), and Sergei Esenin (1895-1925), who had all experienced the first Pinkerton craze as 10- and 12-year-olds, indicate that these colorful, readily accessible parables of Manichean justice in exotic locales allowed young readers to displace their own anxieties about an all-too-confusing domestic situation in the wake of the 1905 Revolution and the subsequent "Reaction". In this, the Russian Pinkertons of the 1900s and '10s functioned in much the same way as American comic books of the 1940s and '50s – another cheaply priced, fixed-format, violent, and markedly graphic (i.e., visual) genre which captivated young readers during a highly reactionary period in their nation's history.

Valentin Kataev's Later Writing and “Uže napisan Verter”: Time, Memory, and a Critical Dream

In this article I consider the place of “Uže napisan Verter” (1980) in Valentin Kataev's fictional writing. I discuss the traits that reveal it as a clear example of Kataev's later writing and also examine those features that distinguish it from that later writing, and thus I account for why it probably was deemed unacceptable for publication in the collection of Kataev's works that appeared between 1983 and 1986. I give especial attention to Kataev's portrayals of how personal time confronts historical time (of how memory and dream confront historical reality), how his experiments in literary form emphasize these portrayals, and how characters' choices about personal time and historical time comment on changes that the Revolution and Civil War brought to Russia. 1 I would like to thank one of Scando-Slavica's anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a draft of this paper and Tatiana Patera for her support in my early work on Kataev's writing.

Zinovy Solomonovich Barkagan

Haematologist who introduced the concept of disseminated intravascular coagulation Zinovy Solomonovich Barkagan is internationally recognised for his pioneering research on snake bites and blood coagulation. He wrote about 20 monographs—including...

The Art of Writing Badly: Valentin Kataev's Mauvism and the Rebirth of Russian Modernism

The art of writing badly is a phrase the Russian writer Valentin Kataev coined to describe the work that came out of the mauvist movement in Russian literature - a style of writing that consciously challenged Soviet dogma. This disobedient writing is typically characterized by an exaggerated focus on the self and by a contradiction of the collective idea. In this book, Richard Borden discusses the cultural and political context from which these authors emerged and the development of bad writing. Examining the works of well-reknown post-Stalinist writers such as Kataev, Evgeny Popov and Adrei Bitov, this text brings to light facets of their writing that have never been discussed, thus enriching the readings of the particular texts under discussion.

Four Demons of Valentin Kataev

“Revolution itself commanded men's lives in those days.”Valentin Kataev, The Grass of OblivionThe Grass of Oblivion, a novel by Valentin Kataev, is a tribute to the Russian writers who were forced to choose their path during the revolution and the civil war. The theme may seem outdated, but the approach to the theme and its literary treatment are amazingly original and modern. In all of Soviet literature it would be difficult to find tragic images comparable to the two poets in this narrative (Bunin and Maiakovskii) who are compelled, finally and irrevocably, either to accept or reject the role offered to them by the new social order. Yet these images are outlined with such grace and elegance, and so tempered with irony, that an ambivalence, an almost diabolic duality is etched into the characters and events. Even the character of the narrator appears split, further complicating the multileveled narrative structure of the novel in which reality is so densely interwoven with fantasy that a third, synthesizing plane of meaning emerges.

Valentin Kataev in His Eighties

Valentin Kataev in His Eighties

Crime Without Punishment: Ivan Bunin’s "Loopy Ears"

Despite their often disparate recollections of Ivan Bunin, émigré writers, critics, and memoirists agree that he was vociferously opposed to the fiction of Fedor Dostoevski, especially his major novels. They recall repeatedly that Bunin looked upon Dostoevskii as a “loathsome writer” and that he indicted Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov for what he believed to be their strained atmosphere, brittle construction, unwieldy style, and, most importantly, their monotonous characters, especially conscience-stricken criminals and suffering heroines. The émigré literati further contend that Bunin found particularly abhorrent the Christian mysticism of Dostoevskii’s world view. In Bunin’s opinion, they report, the ontological flights and falls of Raskol'nikov and Alesha Karamazov were but a lame excuse to “have Christ shoved into vulgar novels.” Valentin Kataev recalls that Bunin raged apropos of Raskol'nikov: “Dostoevskii sticks your nose into impossible and inconceivable abominations, into spiritual filth—From here has come everything that has happened to Russia: Decadence, Modernism, Revolution, young people who are infected to the marrow of their bones with Dostoevshchina—[ who are] without direction in their lives, confused, physically and spiritually crippled by war, not knowing what to do with their strengths and talents, at times, their exceptional, even colossal talents.” Significantly, Bunin’s dislike of Dostoevskii continued until his death. A. Bakhrakh reports that on November 7, 1953, the last day of Bunin’s life, the writer promised that “should I live and God give me strength, I will try again to remove Dostoevskii from his pedestal.”

An Early Soviet Play at the Moscow Arts Theatre

The story of the production in 1928 by the Moscow Arts Theatre (MKhAT) of Valentin Kataev's play Rastratchiki (The Embezzlers) is of interest both in itself, as part of the history of the Russian stage, and for the light it sheds on the character and artistic ideas of the theatre's leading figure K. S. Stanislavsky. In order to understand the importance of the staging by MKhAT of modern plays written by young, relatively unknown authors, one must appreciate the uniquely prestigious position of the theatre and its directors in the cultural life of the country. The fact that Chekhov's plays had first been performed by the theatre, the importance of the new style of acting propounded by Stanislavsky and the venerability of Stanislavksy and Nemirovich-Danchenko secured for MKhAT a position of great cultural importance.

The Problem of Self-Expression in the Later Works of Valentin Kataev

Journal Article THE PROBLEM OF SELF-EXPRESSION IN THE LATER WORKS OF VALENTIN KATAEV Get access R. RUSSELL R. RUSSELL Sheffield Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume XI, Issue 4, October 1975, Pages 366–379, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/XI.4.366 Published: 01 October 1975