Ksenia Keren Faingersh, Department of Slavic Studies Brown University Performing Communist Myths: the Afterlife of an Orphaned Myth May, 2014 © Copyright 2014 by Ksenia Keren Faingersh   This dissertation by Ksenia Keren Faingersh is accepted in its present form by the Department of Slavic Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date______________ __________________________ Dr. Michal Oklot, Adviser Recommended to the Graduate Council Date___________ _________________________ Dr. Alexander Levitsky, Reader Date___________ ________________________ Dr. Spencer Golub, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date___________ ___________________________ Dr. Peter M. Weber, Dean   iii   CURRICULUM VITAE Born in Moscow in 1985 and raised in Israel since the age of 5, in 2008 Keren Klimovsky (Faingersh) has graduated magna cum laude from Brown with a combined BA/MA (double majoring in theater arts and comparative literature for the BA and in Slavic Studies for her MA). While an undergraduate, Klimovsky took advantage of Brown’s literary arts department, studying with some of America’s most prominent playwrights, such as Aishah Rahman, Bonnie Metzgar and Paula Vogel. Having published her poetry, prose and literary translations since the age of 15 – in the most known Russian, Israeli and American periodicals, such as “Novaya Yunnost’”, “Dialog”, “Neva”, “Interpoeziya”, “October”, “Jerusalem Journal” “Druzhba Narodov” and others - Klimovsky developed into a young trilingual writer with a distinctly diverse cultural background. In the past couple of years, after participating in the “8th Forum of Young Writers of Russia” (2008), Keren became finalist and laureate of many prestigious prose and playwriting festivals and contests in Russia, such as the “Ilya-Premiya” contest, the Free Theater of Belarus Competition (2010, 2011), the Tsvetaeva festival (2010, 2011), the Voloshinsky Festival (2011, 2012), the Textura Festival (2011), the Badenweiler Festival (2012). In 2013 Keren entered the short list of “Debut” – the most prestigious Russian award for young writers - with a selection of short stories. Five of her plays and experimental dramatic prose texts have received staged readings in Moscow, Perm, Ryazan’ and other cities in Russia. The Play “Lullaby For a Young Man” had been   iv   included in a published collection of young Russian drama named “Eight”” (The SEIP Fund, 2013) and is rehearsed to be staged in 2014 in theaters in St. Petersburg and Krasnoyarsk. Becoming known as an emerging writer of the New Drama wave, Keren Klimovsky was accepted to Moscow’s Union of Writers. She had also co-authored the script of a recent Russian film “Rehearsals” (2013, directed by Oksana Karas), which won the “best debut” prize at Alexei Batalov’s festival “The Moscow Premiere”.   v   PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “In all critical moments of man’s social life, the rational forces that resist the rise of old mythical conceptions are no longer sure of themselves. In these moments the time for myth has come again. For myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity.” Ernst Cassirer “Myths do not answer questions, they make things unquestionable.” Hans Blumenberg During the last month, I have been following Russia’s latest political events with a great degree of pain and dismay. At one point, I found myself addressing my husband with the following words: “It may sound cynical, but my dissertation is becoming more and more relevant by the hour, which means I might actually find a job as a Slavist. But I wish it were not the case…” While the contemporary Russian society does not simply take a step back to its Soviet past, but is engaged in a more complex process (which involves regaining and reforming its imperial consciousness), those are the Soviet myths – myths engendered in Communist times - that are inevitably recalled and employed under a new rhetoric. Sadly, the understanding of survival mechanisms of myths during their journey from one socio- political frame to another is not only relevant nowadays, but crucial. Both careless, irresponsible treatment of myths and their conscious malevolent exploitation have become very frequent. And thus, I truly hope that the examples provided in my work contribute to the deeper understanding of the myth’s many faces and facets, of its intricate, complex structure. I would also like to believe that this dissertation does not   vi   only warn against potential mythological traps, but convincingly portrays an optimistic alternative – a light in the end of the tunnel. Throughout the process of writing my thesis, I obtained much help and encouragement from my adviser Professor Michal Oklot. I benefited a great deal from his brilliant, inspirational scholarship and guidance. I wish to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to him. I heartily thank Professor Alexander Levitsky for being a source of endless inspiration, support and encouragement over the past 10 years – since the beginning of my undergraduate career at Brown. It is thanks to his immense talent, wisdom, kindness and patience that I have decided to enter graduate school to begin with and managed not to drop out, when times became very difficult. I thank Professor Spencer Golub for his time and effort and for joining the dissertation committee on a rather short notice. I also thank Professor Vladimir Golstein for his informal feedback, which had been extremely helpful and timely. Finally, I am indebted to my in-laws Boris and Ruslana Faingersh, my parents Svetlana Shteingrud and Vadim Klimovsky and my husband Elias Faingersh, who rendered me much help and great support and took a good care of the baby, which made it possible for me to complete this project on time. March 25, 2014   vii   TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page_______________________________________________i Copyright Page__________________________________________ii Signature page__________________________________________iii CV__________________________________________________iv-v Preface and Acknowledgments___________________________vi-vii Table of Contents_______________________________________viii List of Abbreviations_____________________________________ix Table of Transliteration___________________________________x Introduction_____________________________________________1 Lenin Lost? “The Fate of a Wandering Ghost”_________________30 The Split Personality of the Stalin Myth______________________92 Pavlik Morozov and the Artistic Imagination_________________ 171 Conclusion____________________________________________203 Bibliography__________________________________________211   viii   LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CK – (C)Tsentralnyi Kommitet FOM – Fond Obshchestvennogo Mnenia GULAG – Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei i Mest Zakliuchenia KPRF - Kommunisticheskaia Partia Rossiiskoi Federatsii KPSS – Komunisticheskaia Partia Sovetskogo Soiuza MHT – Maly (K)hudozhestvenny Teatr NEP – Novaia Ekonomicheskaia Politika NKVD – Narodnyi Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del (SSSR) OGPU – Ob”edinionnoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie STD – Soyuz Teatralnykh Deiatelei VCIOM – Vserossiskii Tsentr Izuchenia Obshestvennogo mneniya   ix         TABLE  OF  TRANSLITERATION     (Library  of  Congress)       Russian              English       а   a   б   b   в   v   г   g   д   d   е e   ë e   ж   zh   з   z   и   й   i   к   k   л   l   м   m   н   n   о   o   п   p   р   r   с   s   т   t   у   u   ф   f   х   kh   ц   ts   ч   ch   ш   sh   щ   shch   ъ   “   ы   y   ь   ‘   э   e   ю   iu   я   ia       x     INTRODUCTION This thesis explores the “afterlife” of various Soviet ideological and historical myths, which, initially used for the justification of the political goals of the Communist regime, have since become major elements of cultural consciousness in the Russian Federation. At the beginning of Perestroika and during the formation of the new Russia, the orphaned myths were persecuted, dethroned and trampled down; the crisis of the 90s breathed new life into them, providing ground for their renewed relevance and entrenchment. As Cassirer writes, myth is never “really vanquished and subjugated. It is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity.”1 The analysis will focus on several of the most prominent iconic myths of identity of the Soviet regime: the myth of Lenin, the myth of Stalin, and the myth of Pavlik Morozov, a choice that is dictated by the representative nature of these myths and their quintessential importance for the period’s mythical formations. Due to the hypersociality2 typical of the Soviet ideology, which heightens the power of the individual over society, these iconic myths have been the most dominant and important mythic narratives, in a sense, the representative myths of the Soviet system, the overarching mega myths. Since identity is in itself highly performative, such iconic myths possess the highest performing and self- performing potential, the greatest possibility for reproduction and development. In order to elucidate this fact, this dissertation focuses mainly on contemporary plays and                                                                                                                 1  Ernst  Cassirer,  The  Myth  of  the  State  (New  Haven  and  London:  Yale  University  Press,  1969),  280;   henceforth  cited  as:  Cassirer,  The  Myth  of  the  State,  followed  by  page  number.     2  As  used  by  Mihail  Epstein,  “Dialectics  of  the  Hyper”  in  Russian  Post-­‐Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on   Post-­‐Soviet  Culture,  ed.  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover.       1   theatrical productions that, by disassembling and reassembling the orphaned Soviet myths in the post-1989 political space, reveal their performative potentials. Since the most poignant moment of cultural transformation occurs when one framing system of myths is replaced by another, a time of major socio-political change serves as the best illustration of the range and spectrum of such a transformation. At such a time, the myths generated within and under the first system become orphaned and unframed, full of unknown potential. Moreover, a change in transformation in a certain category of myths - known as the “native myth” - is, in fact, the herald of a change in the socio-cultural environment. It is the birth and intersession of native myths, accompanied by the dethronement of former mythical foundations, which defines the shift of socio- historical periods, creating a conditional, tentative ground for a periodization of culture. The period of twenty years that has passed since the fall of the Soviet Union is the most recent and spectacular example in world culture of such a “transformation period” and provides fertile ground for research in that direction. On one hand, 21st century Russia positions itself as rooted in the tsarist, pre-revolutionary era; on the other, it seems to be unable to part with its Soviet legacy. This dual and confused self-identity is responsible for the fact that public discourse in Russia is still engaged in a dynamic dialogue with its Communist past. Of course, a discussion of myth — however specific — requires contextualization within the discourse of European thinking. During the past centuries, through analysis by philosophers of every age, the critical narrative surrounding myth has become an integral part of every cultural department: history, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature, language and even science. Yet, despite the growing   2   popularity of myth as a subject of investigation, there has never been an agreement on its definition. The discussion of the nature and properties of myth has taken a central place in the Western consciousness since the Enlightenment period, triggered by the writings of Descartes who excluded myth from what he considered to be the only acceptable mode of knowledge — the ‘universal’, rational form – wrecking the long settled ancient and medieval view of myths as allegories of nature. This negative perception of myths by the Enlightenment (perpetuated by writers such as Leibniz, Condillac and Diderot) was, however, soon challenged by the “Scienza Nuova”, written by Giambattisto Vico in 1725, which presented figures of myth as constituting symbols of social class, combining the literal symbolic meanings. This text became seminal for the Romantic theorists — particularly Goethe and Herder — who believed myth to be a self-sustaining structure of the human spirit, an essential mode of belief. In the twentieth century he neo-Kantian philosopher Cassirer held to this outlook while adapting it to his own philosophy, viewing myth not as product, but as a process, that is, a mode of thinking, a narrative. As the reader may have noticed, thinkers of every movement and age seem to have appropriated myth to their burning concerns, whilst those who came next added to the conversation by devising their own conflicting, contradictory theories or were preoccupied with completely unrelated topics of this rich field. Thus, in their efforts to define myth, philosophers have resembled the proverbial blind men who attempt to describe an elephant by feeling only one of its parts. In short, myth has successfully avoided both exhaustion and definition, which in itself reveals something about its elusive nature. Naturally, it would therefore be impossible to justify the argument of this   3   thesis by resorting to only one theory of myth, and first we must endeavor to find a common ground or compromise between these different approaches. Be that as it may, prior to delving into the critical narrative on myth, the author would like to establish certain points as common reference guidelines for the reader. The four main assumptions on which the ensuing discussion is based are the anthropological view, presented primarily by Bronislaw Malinowsky’s works Myth in Primitive Psychology (1926) and Sex, Culture and Myth (1963), that myth is not an idle tale, but an active force that reshapes the world; the claims of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss based on his extensive research (reflected mostly in The Raw and the Cooked (1973), The Naked Man (1973), The View From Afar (1985)) that myth is subject to transformation, and that transformation is inherent in mythic thought; Ernst Cassirer’s notion (reflected in Language and Myth (1946) and The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1953) that myth is not only a mode of narrative, but also a mode of thinking, characteristic of all human beings; and the apprehension of myth —thoroughly described by Mircea Eliade in Myth and Reality (1963)— as a system of common symbols, akin to a code or a language, which is predicated upon collective participation. In his book The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), the French scholar Michel de Certeau offers a combination of the approaches listed above, while situating them within the cultural context of the second half of the 20th century. He writes: “I mean by “myth” a fragmented discourse, which is articulated on the heterogeneous practices of a society and which also articulates them symbolically. In modern Western culture, it is no longer a discourse that plays this role, but rather a transport, in other words a practice: writing.”3                                                                                                                 3  Michel  De  Certeau,  The  Practice  of  Everday  Life  (Berkeley:  University  of  California  Press,  1984),  133.       4   De Certeau’s myth is, thus, both a symbolic discourse and a concrete, physicalized power. The mythical consciousness — Cassirer’s “mode of thinking” — is replaced by writing – an active faculty: today’s myth is aggressively active, leaving little space for passivity. To a large extent this is due to its transformational ability: “The origin is no longer what is being narrated, but rather the multiform and murmuring activity of producing a text and producing society as a text.”4 The mythological process has been continuing for so long, that the origin is lost: what we repeat and reproduce are not the original myths, but the transformations and the transformations of transformations. The contemporary world, incompatible with purist aspirations, is overcrowded with a multitude of mythical offsprings, hybrids and simulacrums. Consciousness itself as a mode of perception has been transformed into its active extension: a constant, maniacal productive faculty, the necessity to create by repetition. It is this transformational quality of myth, through which it acquires both invincibility and invasive properties, that possesses most relevance for this thesis. The power inherent in such transformations suggests that moments of re-narrativization and re-contextualization might reveal a myth’s mysterious mechanism of survival. The aim of this thesis is to conduct “transformational research”: to investigate myths at a period of transformation, tracing their development as they are transported from one frame of reference to another; this will result in a vertical analysis as opposed to the horizontal analysis of Levi-Strauss, which follows a series of reincarnations. As well as elucidating the particularities of the socio-historical period, those transformations can facilitate any                                                                                                                 4  De  Certau,  The  Practice  of  Everyday  Life,  134.     5   attempt to deduce a paradigm of mythical change, drawing out the possibilities of development. The perception of mythologies as cultural commonplaces neglects the fact that these recurrent narratives are always naturalized, while their origins — be they literary, historical or political —are forgotten or disguised. However, in attempting to follow the reincarnations of a myth, tracing its coordinates and studying its context becomes highly important. It is best, then, to begin with a discussion of the general relationship between myth and history —and the ways in which they frame each other— as well as the particular place of myth within Russian 20th century history. Of course, it should be specified in advance that history and myth are not necessarily separated concepts and by no means binary oppositions. In fact, in his book History as Myth (1969), Taylor Stevenson, drawing upon the definition of myth given by Eliade as pertaining to realities, providing models for imitation, and being controlled by a knowledge of origin, argues that history is utterly mythological.5 Like myth, history transcends profane time, since it is subject to a posteriori change and recreation by human hand. Considering the discrepancy between the origin and the transformed result, the imposed knowledge — just like any symbolic representation — removed in time, becomes manipulated not by its producers, but by consuming practitioners. What is more, since the historical can never be reinstated in its fullness outside of its past context all factual history is subsequently a distortion of the facts. Therefore, the process of manipulation is reciprocal: when one lives the myth of history, one is transformed by the                                                                                                                 5  Taylor  W.  Stevenson,  History  as  Myth:  The  Import  for  Contemporary  Theology  (New  York:  The   Seabury  Press,  1969).     6   power of the events recollected or re-enacted. History is created by humans and creates and shapes them in return, misdirecting and manipulating them. One must not forget the thread of language, which enables the fusion of myth and history. Since history is constructed and presented as a literary narrative —which is in itself a fictionalization — the control of history and its mythification are manipulated and achieved by and through language. This is especially true of Russia — the geopolitical and semantic space of this dissertation’s mythological research — where the power of the word has retained a somewhat medieval potency. Svetlana Boym, elaborating on everyday mythologies in contemporary Russia, reinforces the significance of the verbal expression of myths: “To understand Russian mythologies it is not enough to trace their origins in intellectual history, state policy or actual practice. It is necessary to remember that they function in the culture as magical incantations, memorized or paraphrased.”6 Thus, language itself, its tendency of repetition and self-reproduction, becomes the vehicle of the myth’s perpetuation, endowing it with a mechanical, unregulated power of control. Ironically, several of those mythological “magical incantations” are used by Russians in post-Soviet times to help them face their thoroughly mythological past, which had suddenly lost a great degree of its redeeming mythological character. This situation is metaphorically, yet accurately described by Evgenii Dobrenko, a scholar of Russian culture studies: “Cоздалась ситуация, при которой общество, мучительно переживавшее кризис идентичности, вынужденно было потреблять вновь открытое                                                                                                                 6  Svetlana  Boym,  Common  places:  Mythologies  of  Everyday  Life  in  Russia  (Cambridge:  Harvard   University  Press,  1994),  4.     7   и полное травматизма прошлое без историзирующей анастезии.”7 (“A situation has been created in which a society that has painfully lived through an identity crisis, was forced to consume a reopened traumatizing past without the benefit of an historicizing anaesthesia.”) The economic losses and the instability of the 1990s only added to the general feeling of insecurity and vulnerability, in short, to the formation of a collective trauma. The sociologist Boris Dubin mentions “inferiority” and “loss” as well as “a disempowering feeling of general immutability of events” as the most notable semantic concepts of the contemporary Russian psyche.8 The traumatized consciousness seeks an exit and finds it in isolation, which is not only not a threat, but a desirable state that suggests a certain ‘selectness’. Indeed, in surveys dating from 1995 to 2005, three out of five adult Russians are of the opinion that Russia ought to have a ‘special path’, which would distinguish it from other countries.9 This concept of “osobyi put’” (a special path) may be perceived as a metaphor, serving to divide the “we” from “the other” and providing the basis for an entire field of symbolic language. One such phrase —which is also a “magical incantation”— that is mentioned by Russians with special pride is “nasha skazochnaia zhizn”10 (our fairy tale life), an allusion to Russia’s historical and cultural uniqueness. Thus, a new mythological ideologeme serves as a redeeming “anesthetic”, a spontaneously generated remedy                                                                                                                 7  Evgenii  Dobrenko,  Muzei  Revoliutsii:  Sovetskoe  Kino  i  Stalinskii  Istoricheskii  Narrativ  (Moscow:  NLO,   2008),  10;  henceforth  cited  as  Dobrenko,  Muzey  Revoliutsii,  followed  by  page  number.     8  Boris  Dubin,  “Kollektivnaia  Amnezia  kak  Forma  Adaptatsii:  Perestroika  i  Devianostye  Gody  v   Otsenkah  “Nulevyh,”  Vestnik  Obshchetvennogo  Mnenia  2  (108)  (2011);  henceforth  cited  as:  Dubin,   “Kollektivnaia  Amnezia”,  followed  by  page  number.   9  Boris  Dubin,  Mifologia  Osobogo  Puti  v  Obshestvennom  Mnenii  Sovremennoi  Rossii,  Ed.  E.  A.  Payin,   (Moscow:  Tri  Kvadrata,  2010),  1.   10  Nancy  Ries,  Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika, (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1997), 43.     8   intended to replace the missing mythologem. However, since the “special path” concept evokes messianic tendencies, and new potential iconic constructions have not yet formed, the developing myth inevitably resorts to the existing, but not yet exhausted iconic figures of the past. Thus, the invention of a new mythology does not necessarily fully replace the old one, but may eventually lead to its resurrection, reactualization and reactivation. Taking the first step towards the negotiation of trauma, language adapts the role of the collective psychoanalyst. It is precisely the repetitive, self-reproductive tendency of language that marks the obsessive preoccupation with the Soviet past. Perestroika does not annihilate the myth, but rekindles a new interest. As Boym writes: “Glasnost’ marked not the end of history but its rediscovery and its passionate rewriting.”11 This phenomenon occurs both on a personal level, as an eruption of stored family narratives, an abundance of memoirs, and on the public level, involving various manifestations from anecdotes and commodities to rave parties, mass media and art installations. The temporal disorientation of contemporary Russian society pushes it towards a disorderly search for symbols that would be able to reestablish historical continuity or at least create the illusion of its existence. Unsurprisingly, it is the iconic myths that prevail, due to their greater symbolic resonance and flexibility of representation. “Stalin”, “Lenin”, the ideal pioneer traitor “Pavlik Morozov” and even the comparatively innocent “Gagarin” - are mythical constructions that have not only managed to survive the crisis, but returned with a vengeance, assimilated to a different cultural frame.                                                                                                                 11  Boym,  Common  Places,  228.     9   Naturally, writers have been active participants in the assimilation of Soviet symbols to the post-Soviet culture: a variety of post-Soviet Russian authors — from Timur Kibirov to Vladimir Sorokin – choose to work with the mythical models of the Soviet unconscious. In this context, the writing figures as an active therapeutic mechanism, defined by Dominick LaCapra as “acting out” — the tendency to repeat something compulsively.12 Locked within this continual, cyclical frame, history assumes the shape of a repetitive ceremony, or ritual, which, given the relationship between ritual and myth, simultaneously brings it closer to the desired mythical substance and helps it yet again to escape its origin. The compulsive rewriting of history is a particular kind of lamentation for its loss. Those manifestations of nostalgia are, however, not homogenous. The more primitive, straightforward and whole-hearted nostalgia, which may be tentatively called utopian nostalgia,13 is akin to nostalgia of a totalitarian kind: the longing to resurrect and reconstruct a past that is gone. Since the Communist project was completely oriented towards the future, with no feeling for the present14, its destruction naturally reoriented perspectives backwards; the recapture of the past was viewed as an opportunity to return to a previous utopian ideal and, by a shift of emphasis, when the future sharply ceased to look bright, the past was needed for the affirmation of the insecure present. This unrelenting iron grip of nostalgia is the same post-traumatic “acting out” principle discussed above in a corrupted form; since the past cannot be overcome, one is performatively caught up in the compulsive repetition of traumatic scenes, that is, “scenes                                                                                                                 12  Dominick  LaCapra,  Writing History, Writing Trauma, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 142. 13  Boym,  Common  Places,  284.   14  cf.  Boris  Groys,  “History  becomes  Form”  in  Russian  Post-­‐Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐ Soviet  Culture.  Ed.  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover  (New  York  &  Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),  399.     10   in which the past returns and the future is blocked or fatalistically caught up in a melancholic feedback loop.”15 Such “acting out”, the inherent performativity of which is only accentuated in the play format, does not reduce the trauma, but multiplies it and perpetuates it. Those who wish to be stuck in the temporal loop of the past in a more sophisticated way resort to ironic nostalgia, which, as gracefully defined by Boym, “puts the emphasis on algia, longing, and acknowledges the displacement of the mythical place without trying to rebuild it.”16 In those cases, the rewriting of the nostalgic text uses irony to familiarize, trivialize and even mock outdated symbols of oppression, to create a safe enough distance from their meaningful context. At times the distance is too great, and it results in the complete isolation of the subject-in-question, rather than the working through of the grey, problematic zones. This is well illustrated, for instance, in the works of the New Drama playwright Maksim Kurochkin. His plays, which fashion history in a fantastical manner, view instances of historical trauma, from such a distance that communication with the past turns into an utterly absurd activity. His characters are strangely omniscient and do not suffer any kind of curative amnesia, yet they seem to live in a completely different, altered reality, far beyond any link with the historical tragedy and devoid of any responsibility for it.17 This may seem like a radical solution, but in the end, ironic nostalgia is the way of the desperate, of those who are willing to grasp at straws.                                                                                                                 15  LaCapra,  Writing  History,  Writing  Trauma,  21.   16  Boym,  Common  Places,    287.   17  cf.  Birgit  Beumers  and  Mark  Lipovetsky  in  Performing  Violence:  Literary  and  Theatrical   Experiments  of  New  Russian  Drama  (Bristol:  Intellect,  2009).       11   The principle tactic of ironic nostalgia is to be found in its appropriation and vulgarization of Soviet symbolism. The process is well illustrated by Communist kitsch, which has found a solid niche in Russian popular culture in fields such as advertising, art and music Communist kitsch is simultaneously a mocking comment on the Soviet abundance of commodities and a deliberate self-devaluation of the commodity, which has lost its ideological value. Another ironic meaning of this playing with images and concepts is the usage of symbols of an anti-Capitalist culture as marketing ploys. Such an ironic playing with concepts, however, does not belong solely to the post- Perestroika period. In fact, the appropriation and reframing of Soviet symbolism emerged as a part of Soviet underground art long before the fall of the Soviet Union. This period, defined by many as the dawn of Russian postmodernism, is perpetuated by the essay “What is Socialist Realism?” by Abram Tertz,18 written at the end of the 1960s. This aesthetic summary of the preceding era, which framed the main artistic principles of Soviet art, attempted to define the guidelines of the socialist model. Yet, in reviewing them with such detail and precision, and deconstructing them so artfully, the writer — consciously or not— in fact, depicts this model as exhausted and dead. The last words of the essay (“May we thus invent something marvelous? Perhaps, but it will no longer be socialist realism.”19) also suggest the presentiment and anticipation of a shift in aesthetics. The foresight of Tertz was proven to be prophetic, since 1971 brought the samizdat print of Andrey Bitov’s “Pushkin House”. This novel may be perceived as a model of therapeutic (i.e. post-traumatic) anti-historical writing, and was destined to                                                                                                                 18  The  literary  pseudonym  of  Andrei  Sinyavskii.   19  Abram  Tertz,  “What  is  Socialist  Realism?”  in  The  Trial  Begins/On  Socialist  Realism  (Berkeley  &  Los   Angeles:  University  of  California  Press,  1982),  219.       12   serve as a reference point for all post-Perestroika novels with a similar goal. However, it describes a trauma approached not from a distance but from within; it offers a glance towards a non-distant, non-removed past, revealing the attempt of the post-Thaw period to reconcile itself with everything that happened after the revolution until the end of the Stalin era. The writer’s main struggle is oriented against the mythologizing narrativization of history. As Vladiv-Glover remarks, in Bitov’s novel “history as factual museum of dead exhibits and decontextualized artifacts is subverted in favor of history as archaeology or the lived unconscious of time.”20 Bitov’s protagonist Lyova, like the narrating author tries to gain an advantage over history by renouncing the role of the silent, passive spectator and consumer and assuming that of the active agent and decision- maker. As an active reader of history, who deconstructs and dislocates the habitual chain of events, focusing on selected “pieces” and ultimately unable gluing them together, Lyova promotes the fragmentation of history, which naturally opposes the false hegemony of a single homogenous discourse and the fruitless attempt search for a dislocated origin. Moreover, since (mythological) tales are “living museums” of survival tactics, in De Certeau’s words, 21 the resistance to the narrative, fluid quality of history relieves it of some of its mythical quality. The mid 1960s and the 1970s are also known for the emergence and dominance of an entire unofficial, underground movement known as Russian Conceptualism. The conceptualists (visual artists such as Ilya Kabakov and Eric Bulatov and poets such as Dmitry Prigov, Timur Kibirov and Lev Rubinshtein) use Soviet iconography – both high                                                                                                                 20  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover,  “The  1960s  and  the  Rediscovery  of  the  other  in  Russian  culture:  Andrei   Bitov”  in  Russian  Post-­‐Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐Soviet  Culture,  ed.  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐ Glover  (New  York  &  Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),  60.   21  De  Certeau,  The  Practice  of  Everyday  Life,  23.     13   symbols and material drawn from everyday life – as the basis of their artwork. Their play with decontextualized concepts disrupts mythic unity by resorting to irony, grotesque and alienation. The deconstruction of chronic stereotypes is achieved by disconnecting the sign from the concept it is supposed to designate. When form falls away from substance, when the sign attains complete independence, language itself is reduced and depleted. Mihail Epstein22 notes that in the case of the Russian conceptualists and their usage of Soviet clichés, “tongue-tiedness turns out to be the alter-ego of grandiloquence, the exposure of its quintessential emptiness.”23 It seems that this self-conscious destitution of language is the only escape from the Communist novoiaz, a language long abused and prostituted. The term ‘language’ in this case refers not only to written language, but to language as a mode of discourse, since the same process of isolating the sign takes place in parallel with Kabakov and Bulatov in the USA, who have specifically named their style “Sots-Art”, highlighting the exaggeratedly ironic and mystical relation of their work to socialist icons. Importantly, in his treatment of Kabakov, Epstein defines his art as “neo-lubok” a domestic, auctorial myth that stands in ironic contrast to the official government myth.24 Again, this domestication” of the myth, its taming of the threatening element, is the main goal of the displacing irony. The questions that remain therefore are: if the irony existed long before the nostalgia, what is it that changed after Perestroika,                                                                                                                 22  This  spelling  does  not  follow  the  transliteration  table,  since  it  was  chosen  by  the  cited  author   himself. 23  Mihail  Epstein,  After  the  Future:  the  Paradoxes  of  Postmodernism  and  Contemporary  Russian   Culture  (Amherst:  The  University  of  Massachusetts  Press,  1995),  32;  henceforth  cited  as:  Epstein,   After  the  Future,  followed  by  page  number.     24  Mihail.  Epstein,  “Emptiness  as  a  Technique:  Word  and  Image  in  Ilya  Kabakov,”  in  Russian  Post-­‐ Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐Soviet  Culture  (New  York  &  Oxford:  Berghahn  books,  1999),   314.     14   what is the specificity of ironic nostalgia, and is it necessarily so different from utopian nostalgia? Keeping in mind the semantic origins of the term “Sots-Art”, this question is certainly justified. If Sots-Art openly and stubbornly draws upon just one sort of congenial ideological material, what is it if not nostalgic? Moreover, conceptualism is similar to its subject of mockery, socialist realism, in a number of characteristics: both forms make use of highly conventional semiotic devices, sets of clichés and idioms that are devoid of intentional self-expression. This is why several critics go so far as to claim that conceptualism shares with socialist realism an explicit anti-modernist stance. It is no wonder that, at first, the phenomenon of Sots-Art was confusing and irritating for both Eastern and Western critics it was not necessarily completely clear whether the artists were critical or supportive of Soviet aesthetics. Even now, some of the most prominent scholars of conceptualism at times allow dubious and betraying “slips” concerning the nature of its demythologizing faculty. For instance, Boris Groys in analyzing the poetics of Komar and Melamid, shows that they do not just unmask the Stalinist myth, but rather remythologize it, penetrating through the Socialist Realist structure into the “Soviet unconsciousness”.25 Mark Lipovetsky, discussing the art of Vladimir Sorokin, the most exemplary Conceptualist in Russian prose, claims that he is building an avant-garde construction of text as a ritual and that it is this ritual-mythological structure that                                                                                                                 25  Boris  Groys,  History  Becomes  Form:  Moscow  Conceptualism  (Cambridge  &  London:  The  MIT  Press,   2010),  2.    Henceforth  cited  as:  Groys,  History  Becomes  Form,  followed  by  page  number.       15   produces the total elimination of meaning.26 Does, then, Conceptualism produce a new myth by revealing the referrent behind the sign? On the other hand, we must remember that it is the very ambivalence of the Soviet ideological universe that is thematized by Conceptualists, and by Sots-Artists in particular as their raw working material — the Soviet mythology — is in itself marked by a dual semantic system. As Lipovetsky notes: “They perceive socialist realism not in its direct, legitimate meaning as the aesthetic code of the ideology in power, but also in its delegitimized form, as a special kind of a world of the absurd.”27 Recalling the depletion and deadening of language, achieved through the isolation of the sign, one must keep in mind that it is not the sign of the dominant discourse of power, but a sign already reduced and impoverished. Working with the ambivalent sign, the conceptualists strip it of one of its layers of discourse, demonstrating its naked flatness. Following this logic, Evgeny Dobrenko, for instance, understands Sots-Art as an artificial mythologizing of the Socialist Realist myth, the revelation of the device that liberates consciousness from the power of the primary myth and allows one to see in it only language.28 If the formalists were consciously “laying bare the device”, the conceptualists are consciously “laying bare the sign”. As for the mechanical similarities, it would be only fair to observe that parodic art, for instance, also simulates the code of the “target text”. The Conceptualist “consciousness” testifies to a legitimate deliberation. It is precisely the importance of such intention that is valued highly by Epstein, who writes:                                                                                                                 26  Mark  Lipovetsky,  Russian  Postmodernist  Fiction:  Dialogue  with  Chaos,  Ed.  Eliot  Borenstein   (Armonk  &  London:  M.E.  Sharpe,  1999),  Page  217;  henceforth  cited  as:  Lipovetsky,  Russian   Postmodernist  Fiction,  followed  by  page  number.     27  Lipovetsky,  Russian  Postmodenist  Fiction,  183.   28  Evgenii  Dobrenko,  “Preodolenie  ideologii”  in  Volga  11  (1990):  5.       16   “The intention of an artistic work is advanced prior to the work and even instead of it.”29 Accordingly, it seems that the conceptualists critically comment upon the meaningless nature of Soviet reality in its entirety. In fact, they make Soviet everyday life seem more artificial and “literary” in its over-aestheticization than Soviet literature. Moreover, considering the Soviet orientation towards the future and the absence of present, the goal of conceptualism, as noted by Groys, is to change the gaze from future to present, from inner vision to external image: “to become external spectator in a world of shared visions”.30 In this light, the goal of the Conceptualists is to draw attention to the vulgar reality of the sign, to its relevant, present-day destitution, to free it of the fallacious utopian potential, that is only possible in a future-oriented set of meanings. Nevertheless, Conceptualist trends, transfigured into ironic nostalgia, acquire completely different meanings in the post-1991 space. The constant preoccupation with the attributes of a collapsed system does not force a focus on the present, but reorients back toward the past, serving as a reminder of the impossibility of separation. As Boym wittily observes: “One wishes to cure nostalgia through history, but ends up historicizing one’s own nostalgia.”31 Indeed, it seems that history is the problematic aspect of the “distancing irony” of both ironic nostalgia and Conceptualism. If we assume, following Barthes, that myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all history, Conceptualism perfectly fits into this definition, as it detaches objects from their meanings and, therefore, from history also. The stripping of the sign divests it of everything, including its history. In this case, as in Kurochkin’s plays, the isolation of the sign leads to the                                                                                                                 29  Epstein,  After  the  Future,  202.   30  Groys,  History  Becomes  Form,  2.   31  Boym,  Common  Places,  291.         17   isolation of the past, which offers a dangerous in escapist tendency and a possible return of the unresolved myth. One thing is certain: by the 1990s Russian “postmodernism” (which includes Conceptualism as a large and important sub-group) had begun to show signs of crisis, as the representatives of the movement began to either repeat themselves or fall silent. Perhaps, this was the manifestation of an artistic premonition of exhaustion, of a dead end. The only one who continued working in the area was Sorokin, but he diluted the conceptualist preoccupation with novoyaz and the Soviet parlance with a number of other “languages”. Sorokin’s playing with an amalgamation of authoritative discourses and a polyphony of languages, which reflected the fragmented post-Soviet reality, is his most notable, most critically acclaimed property. Yet the authoritative Soviet discourse (i.e. the overarching Soviet myth) is no longer the main component, nor the main target. Meanwhile, the sociological plane of the 1990s, with its dangerous denial of the past, testifies that the disappearance of “postmodernist” efforts in literature did not signify a successful completion of the “work with the past” and the surmounting of the trauma. On the contrary, by 2005, the reevaluation of the past fifteen years and the realization of the country’s inability to overcome its national trauma, led to self-exclusion from any collective activity, to a deliberately chosen oblivion and to the avoidance of responsibility. Dubin names this selective amnesia a renunciation of history: Строго говоря, это отказ от истории – от времени возможного выбора и состязания альтернатив, активного самостоятельного поступка, создания новых форм солидарности и ответственности, а не только атомарного выживания в одиночку, пассивной и   18   страдательной принадлежности к коллективной идентичности стигматизированных, парализующей ностальгии по утраченному.32 Strictly speaking, this is a renunciation of history - of a time of possible choices and a competition of alternatives, a renunciation of an active independent deed, of creation of new forms of solidarity and responsibility, and not only a singlet survival of loners, a passive and suffering affiiation to collective identity of the stigmatized, a paralyzing nostalgia for what is lost.33 The simultaneously reinstated mechanism of nostalgia makes progress utterly impossible. While denial hinders the appropriate working-through of historically problematic zones, it is also, paradoxically, the result of the refusal of such a working-through. It is no wonder that superfluous nostalgic historicization eventually allows one to master the mechanisms of the past’s reactualization. Consequently, by the end of the 1990s, one may observe the reappearance of unreserved, fully nostalgic (that is to say, not ironic, but utopian) mutations of Soviet myths. Several of the mythologemes insist on representing themselves as characteristic of the New Russia, and ignore their past context (such as the tropes of “Russia’s uniqueness” and “special path” discussed previously); however, these are clearly renewed, and merely slightly altered, shadows of myths of the not-so-distant past. It is, once more, through narrative and stories that New Russians assert themselves as valuable. As the cycle continues, language dangerously regains power. Nancy Ries explains: “This conventional knowledge of language as wealth allows people to imagine themselves as powerful possessors of the most important social resource and means of production.”34 This sudden shift from the destitution of conceptual, mythical language to                                                                                                                 32  Dubin,  “Kollektivnaia  Amnezia”,  3.   33  All  Russian  quotes  in  this  thesis  are  translated  into  English  by  Ksenia  Keren  Faingersh.   34  Ries,  Russian  Talk,  140.     19   its richness seems to negate the work done by the Conceptualists in a paradoxical way: mutated, stripped of history, and sclerotic, language resurrects he mythological meanings taken from it under more favorable conditions. In endeavoring to make sense of this paradox, one is redirected to Saussure and his particular view of the relationship of language and history. For him the question of continuity in time is crucial: “Language differs with time… A language observed at two different dates is not identical.”35 Following this logic, words that used to designate certain mythical concepts may live through the existential crisis of the sign and be reutilized anew under different circumstances. It is as if the myth undergoes “plastic surgery” with the help of recycled concepts. Perhaps this should not be seen as an upsetting coincidence, but an expected course of events, conditioned by the inherent corruptibility of language. The discussion surrounding the susceptibility of language to mythical influence, as well as the mythical nature of language, is almost as long as attempts to define myth itself. In a sense, this conversation was initiated by the German idealists, particularly Schelling in his Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology (1856), who defined language as a “faded mythology”, and developed by the German philologist Max Mueller in his Comparative Mythology (1906). Mueller writes: “Language is not only a school of wisdom, but a school of folly. Myth reveals the latter aspect to us; it is nothing but the dark shadow cast by language on the world of human thought.”36 For Mueller, two inherent qualities of language make it so hopelessly mythological. Firstly, the “general names”, which are intrinsic to language, disrupt its logical structure and are a                                                                                                                 35  Ferdinand  De  Saussure,  Writings  in  General  Linguistics  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press,  2006),   99.   36  Mueller,  Max.  Comparative  Mythology  (London:  George  Routledge  and  Sons,  1909),  19.       20   source of ambiguity, leading to the creation of a gap, easily filled by myth. Secondly, since language does not have the means for adequate expression, it compensates its fallibility by using symbols to produce a certain lapse, a discrepancy, in short, another gap, conveniently inhabited by myth. The assumption that the symbol is a commonality shared by both myth and language is echoed by many thinkers, from Cassirer, in his Language and Myth, to the Russian philosopher Alexei Losev, in The Dialectic of the Myth (1930). The main argument concerns the failure of language to provide an adequate representation of concepts. For Cassirer, the act of naming itself becomes problematic, since the expression of a feeling is not the feeling itself, but a feeling turned into an image, an incongruous alteration. Of course, both Cassirer and Mueller react to threads of conversation started earlier by Friedrich Nietzsche in “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873) and the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal in “The Letter of Lord Chandos” (1902). Both poeticized texts advocate the belief that words do not express concepts, but function as metaphors to tame the objects behind the sign, inhibiting our immediate experience of them. This charged and morbid view of language is, in fact, one of the cornerstones of the 20th century post-Structuralist movement. Following this logic to the extreme, Paul De Man and Jacques Derrida argue for the thoroughly mythological nature of philosophy altogether due to the philosophers’ constant recourse to metaphorical language. While De Man (in The Epistemology of Metaphor, 1979) claims that, due to the inherently metaphorical character of language, any knowledge transferred by its means is bound to remain symbolic, Derrida echoes him (in White Mythology, 1982), arguing that everything becomes a metaphor once introduced into philosophical discourse. Therefore,   21   once metaphor is accepted as the proper meaning, a double effacement of language occurs, and philosophy, ironically, becomes the impetus behind the process of metaphorization. The 20th century also introduced a more personal and consoling approach to metaphoricity. In Work on Myth (1985), Hans Blumenberg, advocating the beauty of the confused word and the importance of metaphor for the orientation of human thought, devised the term “metaphorology”, which states that what lies under metaphors is, in fact, the nearest approximation to truth and that metaphor in its symbolism is in itself sufficiently distanced to provide a functional weapon against the “absolutism of reality”, which is the fundamental threat implicit in our biological nature. Blumenberg suggests that we can understand what symbolic forms mean and why they exist only by interpreting them, though not as “givens”, but as solutions to an antecedent problem. Thus, he paves a way out of the deadly “mise en abyme” trap set by poststructuralist philosophers. In a sense, this approach parallels the work of the American philologist Albert Cook who offers a definition of myth as mediation: myth, which becomes a metonymy/metaphor machine referred to language. Myth serves as the “modality wherein we consciously mediate between fiction and belief, between language and whatever it is that lies beneath or beyond language.”37 This is the path of the utilitarian myth: if myth and metaphor are not passive “givens”, they may serve as active tools for research. Moreover, as Daniel Dubuisson suggests: “A myth proposes a grid, definable only by its                                                                                                                 37  Albert  Cook,  Myth  and  Language  (Bloomington:  Indiana  University  Press,  1980),  266.     22   rules of construction. For the participants in the culture to which the myth belongs, this grid confers a meaning not on the myth itself, but on everything else.”38 Returning to the aesthetic and cultural context of modern Russia, this path of the utilitarian myth is precisely that chosen by Russian Conceptualism. Using mythological material to expose what lies beneath the sign is the most effective way of “researching” and taming the immediate textual reality, even when what lies behind the sign is a gaping emptiness. As we already know, the sign of the myth possesses only a relative meaning: it is corrupt — that is, does not correspond to the same sign used in ordinary language— and, upon entering into myth, language is emptied of its conventional semantic substance and acquires another. The Conceptualists, as we have established, expose the meaninglessness of the signs with which they work. By recontextualizing and isolating the sign, they free it of its signified, making it completely non-referential. This applied mythological “research” (i.e. research of myth and through myth) surely penetrates into the sociological sphere, as is manifested in Debuisson’s grid theory. As Vladiv-Glover formulates: “Conceptualism exposes the nature of Soviet reality as an ideological mirage and a system of “supersignificant” signs projected by the ruling mind onto the empty space of an imaginary “signified”.”39 Thus, conceptualism may be the model of the Barthian, revolutionary non-mythical language. One must also elucidate another contemporary approach to myth, which differs from Blumenberg’s, yet also works towards a certain vindication of myth and language. Milton Scarborough claims that language is neither literal nor metaphorical. Moreover,                                                                                                                 38  Daniel  Dubuisoon.  Twentieth  Century  Mythologies  (London:  Equinox  Publishing  Ltd.,  2006),  155.   39  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover,  “Heterogeneity  and  the  Russian  Post-­‐Avant  Garde,”in  Russian  Post-­‐ Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐Soviet  Culture,  ed.  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover  (New  York  &   Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),  5.     23   he refuses to see these terms as a pair of binary oppositions. Like Blumenberg, he finds a simple, yet elegant way out of the mise-en-abyme, pinpointing its logical contradiction: if all literal meanings are said to be metaphorical, then what can metaphorical actually mean? However, in contrast to Blumenberg, Scarborough does not believe in the possibility of mythological interpretation, simply because he does not believe in myth as a separate faculty. For him, myth — being absorbed early, preconsciously and prereflectively — is a part of the body: not an object, but a subject. Scarborough sees the trap itself in the attempt to create a limiting definition, which cannot be applied to the elusive subject. Furthermore, he does not neglect to include his own theory within the realm of predestined incompleteness: Our theories and explanations of myth never exhaust it. My own theory of myth is not an exception. It has at least this one virtue – namely, building into the definition the fact that myth, like the body, defies exploration. <…> Not only does the theory feel the myth, but the myth feels (affects and effects the constructing of) the theory. The myth, as part of the body, both feels or prehends the theory and is prehended by it.40 The danger of the compulsive desire of interpretation is brilliantly illustrated in Shoshana Felman’s essay “Turning the Screw of Interpretation” (1977). Analyzing Henry James’ famous work The Turn of the Screw (1908), Felman examines the different critical readings of the novel, demonstrating how every interpretation unwittingly reproduces the mechanism of the text. The reader is forced to make a choice between believing or disbelieving the unreliable narrator (the governess) in deciding whether the ghosts are a reality or a fantasy of her imagination. Yet, by making either choice, the reader involuntarily reproduces the governess’ obsessive reading, her search for the signified located in the knowledge of the other. Interpretation is, thus, a trap: “While the                                                                                                                 40  Milton  Scarborough,  Myth  and  Modernity:  Postcritical  Reflections  (Albany:  State  University  of  New   York  Press,  1994),  84.     24   reader believes that he holds and comprehends the story, it is the story, which comprehends the reader.”41 This impossibility of situating oneself outside the text is paralleled by the impossibility of remaining outside myth. For instance, this is how Levi-Strauss comments on his own participation in mythology making in the introduction for “The Raw and the Cooked”: As the myths themselves are based on secondary codes (the primary codes being those that provide the substance of language), the present work is put forward as a tentative draft of a tertiary code, which is intended to ensure the reciprocal translatability of several myths. This is why it would not be wrong to consider this book itself a myth: it is, as it were, the myth of mythology.”42 Even if one refutes the structural similarity of myth and language used by Levi-Strauss in his argument, it is quite easy to see how, according to Felman’s logic, writing about myth in an attempt to define it would only contribute another layer to the endless formation of mythology. Resisting a myth by a direct dethronement is, thus, even more pertinently dangerous. Cassirer, at least, admits that it is beyond the power of philosophy to destroy myths, since myth is invulnerable: “(Myth) is impervious to rational arguments; it cannot be refuted by syllogisms.”43 Being metaphorical and constructed in a narrative form, myth cannot be disputed: any other, contrary, “corrected” and revised version would only endow the mythological tale or image with a mythological status, albeit of an altered nature. Thus, any open resistance to myth achieves a result contrary to its intention. Barthes warns us of this danger, mentioning poetry as an example whose very resistance                                                                                                                 41  Shoshana  Felman,  “Turning  the  Screw  of  Interpretation,”  Yale  French  Studies  55-­‐56  (1977):  184.   42  Claude  Levi-­‐Strauss,  The  Raw  and  the  Cooked  (London:  Jonathan  Cape,  1973),  12.   43  Cassirer,  Myth  of  the  State,  296.     25   makes it ideal prey for myth: “The apparent lack of order of signs, which is the poetic facet of an essential order, is captured by myth and transformed into an empty signifier, which will serve to signify poetry. […] By fiercely refusing myth, poetry surrenders to it bound hand and foot.”44 What Barthes suggests instead is the active, “revolutionary” language mentioned earlier: the performative language of man as a producer. “Wherever man speaks in order to transform reality and no longer to preserve it as an image, wherever he links his language to the making of things, meta-language is referred to a language-object, and myth is impossible.”45 Yet, as Groys claims, it is precisely leftist, Marxist politics that are mythological within the Russian historical context; by casting the artist, the proletariat, the party, the leader in the role of demiurge, they provide for their natural integration into world mythology.46 It is through myth, and via mythical language, that the world was transformed after the 1917 Revolution. Thus, even performative language is not necessarily anti-mythological; Conceptualism may be the one and only exception, and not a consoling one. Are we forced to make a choice between flattened signs that cancel themselves out (the “riddle of self-manifested emptiness”47) and the ambiguous and thus potentially mythological sign? This thesis attempts to answer this question, as well as to analyze the changes which mythological constructions undergo when resurrected in a new time and space. Genis writes:                                                                                                                 44  Roland  Barthes,  Mythologies  (New  York:  Hill  and  Wang,  1972),  134.   45  Barthes,  Mythologies,  146.   46  Boris  Groys,  The  Total  Art  of  Stalinism,  (London  &  New  York:  Verso,  2011),  117.   47  Mihail  Epstein,  “Like  a  Corpse  in  a  Desert:  Dehumanization  in  the  New  Moscow  Poetry,”  in  Russian   Postmodernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐Soviet  Culture  (New  York  &  Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),   136.     26   The collapse of communism, leaving the Soviet world without its accumulated symbolic arsenal, led to a loss of its metaphysical paternity. <…> Having lost its signified, the language of communism died. Its signs became one-dimensional and lost their ability to express anything standing behind them. <…> the relationship between signifier and signified had become arbitrary.48 The object of examination of this dissertation is precisely the fate of this changed relationship between the signified and the signifier: the mythical regeneration under a different frame. Carefully following three distinct, exemplary iconic myths — those of Lenin, Stalin and Pavlik Morozov — this thesis analyzes the prospects and trends of metamorphosis, the process of cyclical reincarnation of myth, in short, the stages of a myth’s transformation. The first chapter tells the story of the “Lenin myth”, a myth closely linked to the myth of the October Revolution, and consequently to national identity, which exhibits a complex inner conflation of the mythical and the ritualistic, and which was fated to become a signifier for other myths. In this way, it is a myth that has been systematically appropriated and abused. As well as revealing the complex history of the sign, the chapter discusses the different efforts to effect its demythologization: the Conceptualist recontextualization of the Lenin myth, found in the works of Venedikt Erofeev and Sergey Kuryokhin and the “laying bare” of the mythological process —the careful depiction of the transformation of a human being into the myth— which is central to the performances of Victor Denisov’s “Six Specters of Lenin on a Piano” and Alexandra Kolesnikova’s verbatim play “Profession: Lenin”.                                                                                                                 48  Alexander  Genis,  “Onions  and  Cabbages:  Paradigms  of  Conteporary  Culture.”  in  Russian   Postmodernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐Soviet  Culture  (New  York  &  Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),   399.     27   The second chapter portrays the historical reincarnation of the “Stalin myth”, which is a mythic construct of a different category: it is based upon desirable and loose sign, positioning itself as the timeless, “eternal signified” which subjects everything to itself and, becoming a slave to its own mythological web, is eventually abused and corrupted by its own endless replications. While during the late Soviet era, the “Stalin myth” was effectively demythologized by various Conceptualist tactics (as demonstrated by Victor Korkia, Dmitry Prigov, Vladimir Sorokin and the Sots-Artists), its rich and complex mythological structure caused its disintegration into a conglomeration of minor “Stalin myths”, each with its own political premise and agenda, making the targeting of the fragmented (and thus loosely defined) myth virtually impossible. Rendered invincible through its interconnected mythologemes, the “Stalin myth” has expanded and grown stronger in the contemporary Russia, as shall be illustrated by an analysis of the numerous appearances of various “Stalins” on the Russian stage and screen. The third chapter follows the artistic creation of the myth of “Pavlik Morozov”, a myth that, like the “Lenin myth” appeals to consumers’ needs and demands. However, its prostitution is not proof of the exhaustion of the sign, but a reflection of societal needs and of an exceptional flexibility and adaptability, which has granted its post-Soviet survival. This chapter examines and breaks down the overall process of iconic myth- making through both fictionalization and documentalization going to the roots of the creation and recreation of the “Pavlik Morozov” myth whilst taking into account the analysis provided by the historicized investigations of Yury Druzhnikov and Catriona Kelly. At the heart of the chapter, which will ultimately question the very possibility of   28   demythologization, is “Pavlik My God” a contemporary “new drama” play by Nina Belenitskaya. Since this thesis examines myth mainly through plays and staged productions, the danger presented by the mise-en-abyme multiplies: the performed myth embodies not just the trap of “the mythical outside”, linked to the trap of language, but also the trap of performativity considering both the semantic impossibility of defining performance and the investigation of performance, which — according to the definition above —- is itself something of a performance. However, perhaps in this case, two “negatives” could yield a “positive”: perhaps the performed myth will reveal something new about its abilities to transform and its own capacities for transformation?   29   LENIN LOST? “THE FATE OF A WANDERING GHOST” The STD Library catalogue numbers 157 plays about Lenin and more than a thousand references to performances of those plays in theaters throughout the USSR. Considering the expansive dramatic and scenic attention that he received, one cannot help wondering whether he continues to make appearances on the post-Soviet stage and, if yes, in what capacity. In order to approach this question I shall discuss and analyze two post-Soviet plays featuring the persona of Lenin — “Six Specters of Lenin on a Piano” by Victor Denisov and “Profession: Lenin” by Alexandra Kolesnikova — together with their different stage interpretations. In order to contextualize this analysis, however, it is first necessary to outline the process of the creation of the Lenin myth and its development at different stages. An understanding of the innate ritualistic and theatrical nature of the Lenin icon is crucial for further discussion of the ways in which the myth of Lenin operates within a theatrical frame. The Lenin myth does not stand by itself in the consciousness of the Russian people; it is, rather, inseparable from the myth of the October Revolution. As with all societies that undergo a rapid change, the newborn Soviet structure was, at it inception, in need of a myth of tradition, a common starting and reference point for the entire nation. The past had to be recreated (or reinvented, if necessary), and there could be no more appropriate choice than the event at the State’s origin: the dynamic, turbulent October Revolution with the dramatic, spectacular storming of the Winter Palace as its culmination. The first official ceremonies and celebrations of the October Revolution   30   appeared during the Civil War years between 1917 and 1920. As well as conveying the dramatic importance and essence of the October Revolution, these public reenactments of historical events served as a kind of revolutionary script: they gave individuals who had been removed from the actual events the opportunity to see themselves as members of the “cast”, to sense their own involvement and importance through a theatrical form of belated participation. The more this reenacted story was repeated, the more crucial it became for the self-perception of the young nation. The method of establishing a shared past through reenactment proved to be the fastest and most successful means of inventing a new mythology. Of course, in this case, the past was reinvented considerably more than recreated: as Corney writes, the taking of the Winter Palace was not historically the most important event of the October Revolution. Indeed, the building was not viewed by Russians as a symbol of oppression: it housed a powerless cabinet, it was seized a day after the Bolsheviks were already in power and it was never actually stormed.49 The actual facts were rearranged, distorted and embellished to create an event worthy of reenactment and which could serve as a dignified, glorious originary myth. It seems that it would be more appropriate to codify the continuous mass reenactments as “ritual” rather than as “mythology”. At the turn of the century mass spectacles were not a phenomenon unique to Russia, but were common throughout Europe and originated, as Fischer-Lichte claims, in a deep yearning for communal experience.50 Their general role has always been to shape and establish a collective                                                                                                                 49  Frederick  C.  Corney,  Telling  October:  Memory  and  Making  of  the  Bolshevik  Revolution  (Ithaca  and   London:  Cornell  University  Press,  2004),  2.   50  Erica  Fischer-­‐Lichte,  Theatre,  Sacrifice,  Ritual:  Exploring  Forms  of  Political  Theatre  (London  &  New   York:  Routledge,  2005),  90.     31   identity, and this modern pageantry was perceived as a fusion between theater and ritual. Be that as it may, the mass spectacles of 1917 could not be defined as ritual, since this emerging society did not yet possess the necessary codified language. This inspirational combination of drama and play, which only became ritual some years later, could be best classified as “active mythology”, or what Karen Petrone would probably refer to as “celebration discourse”. Another way of reconciling this tension between historical definitions of myth and ritual is suggested by E. B. Taylor who believes that myth itself has a ritual character, insofar as the words of myth hide the same potential for action, which is put into force in ritual.51 In fact, for the creators of the mass spectacles —Vyacheslav Ivanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky — drama and ritual were inseparable from myth. The action of live participation that linked those three concepts was marked by Ivanov as deistvo: “the representation of a crucial transformation in the life of an individual that spoke for the whole of society through the symbolic essence.”52 For Ivanov — the former symbolist poet and the current head of Narkompros — immediacy was key. The fabrication of a common experience with a symbolic meaning, very much in the Dionysian spirit, was close to Ivanov’s understanding of myth as a flesh-and-blood dramatic action rather than a remote tale. In this socially relevant “active mythology” actors and spectators were united in mystical communion, or –Levi-Strauss wrote much later, “a desperate attempt to reestablish the continuity of lived experience.”53 As always in performance, the move beyond text to event and corporeality signified the wish to overcome theatrical illusion                                                                                                                 51  According  to  that  logic,  history  itself  is  an  “active  myth”,  which  one  relives  when  seized  by  the   power  of  the  events  recollected  or  re-­‐enacted.     52  Corney,  Telling  October,  143.   53  Clause  Levi-­‐Strauss,  The  View  From  Afar  (Chicago:  The  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1985),  743.     32   and here it was employed to a very specific political purpose. As Von Geldern opines, “a foundation tale is only successful insofar as it is able to implicate the individual in the tale.”54 As every new listener became in his turn the storyteller, the story gained momentum, acquiring new details, embellishments and adornments. The originating myth was established as a self-serving, constantly engaged mechanism-in-motion. However, the process of constant retelling that was giving the myth its power could not retain the spontaneous immediacy of the original reenactments. In 1927, by the time of the 10th anniversary celebrations, the October Revolution was already part of historic memory: the October myth had been gradually and imperceptibly institutionalized. An important landmark in this process, which also serves as evidence of its completion, was Eisenstein’s depiction of the events of October and his treatment of the Revolution as a spectacle of historical genesis. (Ironically, the director’s inspiration for this film came from a mass spectacle performed at a festival on the third anniversary of the event.55) Using the medium of film to record his impressions, Eisenstein had once and for all rid the scenario of any unpredictability or freedom. The immediacy was replaced by the stiffness of the frozen picture; the unrestrained physicality and the open space supplanted by the palpable, solid, and limiting artifacts of film and screen. Moreover, the constant reality of the film allowed it to become the ‘absolute’ version of the events. In his book Eisenstein, Cinema and History, James Goodwin demonstrates how Eisenstein employed various visual techniques and frames to distort both time and geographical                                                                                                                 54  James.  Von  Geldern,  Bolshevik  Festivals,  1917-­‐1920  (Berkley  and  Los  Angeles:  University  of   California  Press,  1984),  1;  henceforth cited as: Von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, followed by page number.   55  Von-­‐Geldern,  Bolshevik  Festivals,  2.     33   unity in his representation of the Bolshevik Revolution. However, it was precisely this representation that later served as a script of sorts for further revolutionary role playing. The possession of a fixed scenario allowed the transferal of the October myth from the private sphere to the domestic realm. Children growing up in the 1920s were encouraged to play at “revolutionaries” by dividing themselves into “reds” and “whites” and reenacting not only the charge of the Winter Palace, but many other battles. The full- bodied performance of history thus gained a casual, everyday character, and became not so much a celebration, but a lesson in mythical history. The children did not only learn through such play, but tried on their future adult social roles. As the October myth lost its spontaneity and gained a more rigid social codification, it followed the typical path of myths and became “servile” - used and adapted for particular social and political purposes. From 1928 to 1940, the carnivalesque, merry spirit of the Bolshevik festivals subsided, and the celebrations became more formal and standardized. Furthermore, as the 1937 festival, the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution, was shadowed by the purges, history was rewritten overnight, obliterating the role of the “enemies of the revolution” —such as Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky— in the October events. In short, while preserving all of its outer ritualistic qualities, the October myth lost its initial essence. Since its initial purpose had long been forgotten, it ceased to figure as the originating myth, leaving behind only the shell of an empty ritual. At the same time, the October myth had, at its origin, also fulfilled an opposite function: it created a sub-myth, aggrandizing it and subjecting it to its purposes. The charge of the Winter Palace did not suffice to legitimize the new regime; an iconic myth — an image — was needed to support and complement the ritualistic aspect. Since such   34   an icon is most strongly supported by visual art, it was Eisenstein’s film that which played a fundamental role in establishing Lenin as the symbol of the Revolution: “The film presents Lenin as a manifestation of the masses’ energy and direction. Lenin does not control events, but rather he appears at the pivotal moments, when movement towards revolution is intensified.”56 It is, thus, evident that the myth of Lenin never existed on its own, but was appropriated by another mythical structure at the moment of its birth. Of course, the image of Lenin was selected and anointed by the Revolution as a very obvious and convenient potential grand-myth. A variety of mythical narratives pertaining to Lenin existed long before the establishment of his cult. As Tumarkin suggests, myths of Lenin had been popular in distant regions such as the Urals since the first days of the Revolution; and — not coincidentally — they were all of a folkloric nature: the stylized, familiar mythical forms of folk narrative allowed such a powerful and distant figure as Lenin to seem familiar and accessible.57 To facilitate the bonding of the populace with its leader, the impetus for which was demonstrated in these tales, more formal and “documentary” biographies of Lenin were created: by Olminskii, by his wife Krupskaia, by his sister Ulianova (whose work targeted a younger pioneer audience) and, finally, the famous biography of John Reed, “Ten Days That Shook the World” (1919). In essence, the metonymic message of all these works is similar: Lenin stands for the party, indeed, he is the party just as he was in the slogan, which became so popular soon after: “говорим Ленин – подразумеваем партия, говорим партия – подразумеваем                                                                                                                 56  James  Goodwin,  Eisenstein,  Cinema  and  History  (Urbana  &  Chicago:  University  of  Illinois  Press,   1993),  90.   57  Nina  Tumarkin,  Lenin  Lives:  The  Lenin  Cult  in  Soviet  Russia  (Cambridge:  Harvard  University  Press,   1983),  92.     35   Ленин.” (“When we say ‘Lenin’, we mean ‘The Party’, when we say ‘The Party’, we mean ‘Lenin’.”) This effaced image of Lenin as an entity that was completely merged with the party, though perfect ideologically, could not, by itself, be attractive enough to arouse and cultivate adoration and worship. An element of the supernatural or the divine had to be added to complete the picture. This deification of the national leader was not introduced to the Russians by the Soviet system: the emerging cult of Lenin (in the most Christian, archetypal sense) fitted well into the tradition that saw the Romanov dynasty as divine and also engaged with the cult of Alexander the Great. Tacitly, the same elements of Old Russia that the Bolsheviks had been eager to destroy were clearly present in the mythologization of the new leader. This appeal to Christianity was the natural continuation of the exploitation of Christian rhetoric in Soviet festivals. In addition to the pagan Dionysian motives, the festivals were modeled on patterns provided by Christian mythology: history was narrated as in medieval mystery plays. Fischer-Lichte, for instance, finds a clear parallel between the forms of behavior and experiences during these festivals and those during the Orthodox Easter celebrations.58 Not only was the history of pre-revolutionary oppression narrated as a battle between Evil and Good, but the parallels between the finale of the mass spectacles and that of the Easter liturgy would have been evident to the attentive observer. At the culmination of the reenactment — the storming of the Winter Palace — the newly acquired collective identity of the revolutionaries was certified by a                                                                                                                 58  Fischer-­‐Lichte,  Theatre,  Sacrifice,  Ritual,  9.       36   sacrifice, the blood shed in the fight for liberation.59 Of course, instead of crying for Jesus however, the emotional, excited crowds, cried for Lenin. Naturally, no direct allusions to Lenin’s identification with Christ were ever made. Moreover, there was always a certain confusion about the role of Lenin within the Communist pantheon: at the beginning of the cult, he was codified as a saint – first by Zinoviev addressing Lenin as “a saint, an apostle and a prophet”60, then by the creation of iconography — stylized portraits and busts of Lenin—by the writing of idealized biographies, typical of hagiography, and by the sacred writings of Leninism. At a later period, however, Demian Bednyi in his poem “Vozhdiu”, written for Lenin’s 50th birthday directly referred to his collected works as to “the holy bible of labor”, thus making Lenin’s mythological status lean towards Christ once again. The illness of the leader resulted in a definitive “promotion” from a saint to Christ, as the cult of the absent leader reached its expected culmination. However, this wavering and blurring between the image of a saint and the image of Christ survived even Lenin’s death. On one hand, Lenin’s wounds suggested a clear parallel to Christ; on the other, the Lenin corners that appeared during his sickness were reminiscent of the “saint corners” in Russian izbas. However, the cult established after Lenin’s death directly pointed towards the Christ-like notion of life after death, hence the mausoleum and the slogan “Lenin lives!” Likewise, palm branches, which are symbolic of Christ’s martyrdom, were intertwined in the wreaths at Lenin’s funeral. 61 As we can see, such ritualism — that is, the “worship” associated with the Lenin corners and, later, with Lenin’s undead body in the                                                                                                                 59  Fischer-­‐Lichte,  Theatre,  Sacrifice,  Ritual,  116.     60  Tumarkin,  Lenin  Lives,  82.   61  Ibid.  165.     37   mausoleum— did not just compliment the myth of Lenin, but underlined the fact that the origins of its mythological cultural frame had been always bifurcated. As for the development of the Lenin myth into ritual, the immense physicality of the Lenin cult stands as important testament to this transformation. The Lenin museum used to contain more than 300 artifacts: Lenin’s portraits were printed on posters, table cloths, plates, cigarette cases, match boxes. Vladimir Maiakovskii’s famous poems “Vladimiru Ilichu Leninu” and “Komsomol’skaia”, written shortly after his death, denounced the vulgarity of the Lenins cult and the transformation of his image into a commodity. As Levi-Strauss writes: As regards gestures and objects, all observers have rightly noted that, in ritual, they are given a function additional to their practical use: gestures and objects serve in loco verbi; they are a substitute for words. Each is a global connotation of a system of ideas and representations; by their use, ritual condenses into a concrete and unitary form procedures which otherwise would have had to be discursive.62 In effect, the merchandising of Lenin was the result of the successfully established ritual (and was, essentially, of the same nature as the obligatory mourning meetings.) The commodities of the cult, being part of the propaganda, not only acquired the charged powerful potential of words, but became ideologically relevant statements. As Mihail Epstein notes, such an expansion of the sign subjected the Soviet citizen to a “double control, a doubly reinforced signifying chain.”63 The ideology, however, fast found other “signifying fathers”, facilitating the Hegelian transition from matter to spirit: Lenin’s very name became an object of merchandise as well. From a whole, intact sign, “Lenin” became a signifier - a verbal                                                                                                                 62  Claude  Levi-­‐Strauss,  The  Naked  Man  (London:  Jonathan  Cape,  1973),  671.   63  Mihail  Epstein,  “Emptiness  as  a  Technique:  Word  and  Image  in  Ilya  Kabakov,”  in  Russian  Post-­‐ Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐Soviet  Culture,  ed.  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover  (New  York  &   Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),  313.     38   commodity. Dozens of sayings and slogans emerged that ransacked the name of Lenin and countless cities, streets and localities, as well as newborn children, were named after Lenin in some fashion or the other. It was as if Lenin’s name, just like that of a saint, continued to emanate power after his death.64 The abundant practical utilization of a name as a sign is characteristic of mythological thinking. As Cassirer writes, in the mythical view “magical powers attach directly to the word. He who gains possession of the name and knows how to make use of it, has gained power over the object itself.”65 Hence, the shift from myth to ritual leads back to myth. This serves as yet another illustration of the undulating, cyclical nature of the myth-ritual relationship that frames the Lenin myth. The powers that were mythologically attributed to the name of Lenin fit well into the general social role of language under the new system. As the Bolsheviks strived towards a renegotiation of meanings, they believed that speech, as one of the most important societal aspects, must be deconstructed and built anew to reflect new ideas correctly. In this task they had to rely mainly on oral modes of communication as a large proportion of the population was illiterate. “The living word” thus gave citizens more direct and immediate access to the language, symbols, and visions of the new society and encouraged their active participation in its verbal construction.”66 The multiplication and amplification of Lenin’s name revealed the same performative power of language as the rehearsed speech at the October celebrations. Moreover, the reproduction of naming as a                                                                                                                 64  The  obsessive  repetition  of  Lenin’s  name  is  reminiscent  of  a  movement  in  Orthodoxy  called   imyaslavtsy  (which  had  been  popular  in  the  end  of  19th/beginning  of  20th  century)  who  had  been   convinced  that  repeating  God’s  name  multiplied  His  sanctity.     65  Ernst  Cassirer,  The  Philosophy  of  Symbolic  Forms  (New  Haven:  Yale  University  Press,  1953),  118.     66  Marvin  Carlson,  Speaking  in  Soviet  Tongues:  Labguages  at  Play  in  the  Theatre  (Ann  Arbor:  The   University  of  Michigan  Press,  2006),  45.       39   process could not be classified as either oral or written: it was beyond both these media, belonging to a higher and eternal aspect of language. The compulsive reproduction of the “Lenin” symbol as a signifier eventually blurred and nearly effaced the signified, rendering it too vague and utopian, a result that falls well within the characterization of the Soviet language project as discussed by Siniavskii: “The Soviet language tries to rename everything using labels that indicate only a potential meaning, an ideal that may never materialize.”67 Curiously, as a political figure, Lenin in his speeches and writings was considered to be the chief decanonizer of language: literary critics, such as Shklovsky, mentioned his resistance to cliché and his use of colloquial and even vulgar language as a means of lowering the traditional language of rhetoric. Ironically, Lenin the symbol negated the work of Lenin the writer: as the vague idealized signified never reached its intended potential, the signifier was horribly trivialized; “Lenin” became the overriding cliché, the canonized, sacred cliché. Lenin-the-symbol had been appropriated once again, this time, by the very language that produced it. The cult of Lenin persisted until the end of the 1920s, when it was slowly replaced by the cult of Stalin around the time the first wooden mausoleum — a place of mass pilgrimage for several years — was replaced by a new construction made of stone and granite. Tumarkin sees in this proof of the demise of Lenin’s cult: the stone — cold and lifeless — represented Stalin’s deliberate attempt to confine Lenin to the past, and, symbolically, his second death.68 However, a more probable reason is suggested by Paperny in his acclaimed book “Kul’tura 2” a shift from one culture to the other; from the revolutionary and NEP years (“culture 1”), to the period of Stalin’s reign (“culture                                                                                                                 67  Andrei  Siniavskii,  Soviet  Civilization  (New  York:  Arcade  Publishing,  1988),  191.   68  Tumarkin,  Nina  Lives,  Page  206.     40   2”.) Cultures 1 and 2 present opposing systems in both ideology and aesthetics: culture 1 looks into the future and lives in the future, while culture 2 eliminates future by turning it into eternity while looking back towards the past as into the end of history: Культура 1 сжигает свои руки и ноги, смывает с души память и пожирает своих детей… […] Идея мавзолея возникает в культуре 1 как временная. Мавзолей понадобился лишь в целях предоставления всем желающим, которые не успеют прибыть в Москву ко дню похорон, возможность проститься с любимым вождем. Культура 2 прощаться с любимым вождем не собирается. Временный деревянный мавзолей заменяется сначала более основательным, а потом в 1930 г., каменным, рассчитанным на вечность.69 Culture 1 burns its own arms and legs, washes memory off its soul and devours its children… […] The mausoleum idea appears in Culture 1 as a temporary one. The only purpose of the mausoleum had been to provide an opportunity to bid farewell to the beloved Leader to all those who will not be able to arrive to Moscow on time to participate in the funeral. Culture 2, on the other hand, has no intention to bid farewell to the beloved Leader. The temporary wooden mausoleum is replaced first by a more fundamental one, and then – in 1930 – by a stone one, designed to last forever. The Lenin myth was thus cemented and, in a way, imprisoned by Stalinist culture: it was no longer simply caught in its own past (as often happens to myths); it was caught in the past of another culture, a culture removed and distanced by a new one. The following years marked the most cynical appropriation of the Lenin myth.70 The figure of Lenin either went hand in hand with the figure of Stalin, portraying the spiritual succession between the leaders, or was simply used as a mouthpiece for Stalin’s ideas. Such way of representation helped to foster an unspoken understanding that the image of Lenin stood for Stalin. Thus, “Lenin” became the signifying image for Stalin. This was, naturally, reflected in the “Lenin plays” of the period, which appeared in                                                                                                                 69  Vladimir  Paprny,  Kultura  Dva  (Moscow:  Novoe  Literaturnoe  Obozrenie,  2006),  10.       70  In  fact,  Stalin’s  manipulation  of  the  Lenin  myth  began  when  Lenin  was  ailing,  but  still  living,  yet  the   abuse  of  the  “Lenin”  sign  gained  full  momentum  after  Lenin’s  death.       41   abundance. For instance, Nikolai Pogodin’s play “The Gunman” (“Chelovek s Ruzh’iom”), written at the peak of Stalin’s Terror in 1937, which deals with the fears and anxieties of the Bolsheviks on the eve of the revolution, is, in fact, written to no other purpose than to justify the events of the 1930s. Lenin is shown here through the eyes of the protagonist Schadrin – a red army commissar. The leader of the revolution is portrayed as an ordinary, reasonable and likable person: warmly humorous, honest, self- critical, yet also very demanding - a sort of superman whose simplicity is, too, enigmatic and intriguing. Stalin, a seemingly minor character in the play, upon closer turns out to be the dominant figure. If, in the second act, Lenin (conversing with Stalin) shows complete approval of the latter’s deeds and intentions from the position of a leader, in the last act it is Stalin and not Lenin who instructs and encourages the Red Army soldiers. Besides the continuation of Lenin’s legacy by Stalin, the playwright Pogodin lays emphasis on a “division of labor”: Stalin is the executor, the practical man, while Lenin is the man of ideas. Not surprisingly, Lenin’s “idea” echoes Stalin’s own: the fierce and merciless repression of “counter-revolutionaries” and other “enemies of the regime”. In a conversation at the Bolshevik headquarters, Lenin proclaims: Очень хорошо — выясните сами, понимают ли товарищи, что политическое положение теперь свелось к военному, как на деле без идиотского прекраснодушия подавляется контрреволюция. Да, да… Бейте без пощады, без сожаления, по всем хлюпикам, трусам, штрейкбрехерам, нашим изящным парламентариям, которые умеют размахивать бумажными мечами, а от настоящего дела бегут в кусты.71 Very well – find out for yourselves if the comrades understand that the political situation has come down to a military one, that the                                                                                                                 71  Nikolai  Pogodin,  “Chelovek  s  Ruzh’iom”  in  Trilogy  (Moscow:  Khudozhestvennaia  Literatura,  1969),     45.       42   counterrevolution is being suppressed without any idiotic starry-eyed idealism,. Oh, yes… Strike with no mercy, with no regret, strike all those whimpers, cowards, strike-breakers, our refined parlament members who only swing paper swords in the air and run away to the bushes from real deeds. In the play’s finale Lenin delivers an unambiguous speech: “the man with a gun” shall not be feared anymore, since the Red Army, though considered dictatorial by some, is protecting the country and its people. Undoubtedly, the necessity of terror during the Civil War years is equated to the necessity of terror in the thirties, and the implacable Lenin stands for the implacable Stalin. The sanctity of the Lenin figure as an image of Stalin superceded the sanctity of the actual Lenin cult. The highest criteria were applied to the representational construction of Lenin’s scenic image. Only specially chosen actors were allowed to represent the “holy” figure, and any play that represented Lenin was severely censored. As a result, the playwrights approached their Lenins timidly and hesitantly, creating the kind of flat, external, even static portrayals that are so characteristic of 1930s plays. As Petrone puts it: “The Lenin that emerged during the twentieth anniversary lacked any internal complexity and more resembled the Lenin in the mausoleum than the Lenin who organized revolution.”72 For instance, in Alexander Shtein’s “In-Between Rains” (Mezhdu Dozhdiami), which was written in 1939 and deals with Lenin's suppression of the Kronshtadt Rebellion, Lenin is almost absent from the play altogether. He appears only once in the first act, humbly eating black bread in his kitchen, and once again in the second where he discloses his torn sentiments in a very long monologue in which he debates whether to                                                                                                                 72  Karen  Petrone,  Life  Has  Become  More  Joyous,  Comrades:  Celebration  in  the  Times  of  Stalin   (Bloomington:  Indiana  University  Press,  2000),  165.     43   stick to his principles or to pity the rebels and forgive them. Eventually, showing complete indecision and a lack of resolution or leadership, he allows the people to decide: “Съезд решит. Убежденные коммунисты принесут на лед свою революционную убежденность. И свою жизнь. И решат судьбу Кронштадта.”73 (“The congress will decide. Devout Communists will bring their revolutionary decisiveness to the ice. They will bring their life. And they will deicde upon the fate on Krondstadt.”) One could suppose that Shtein suggests Lenin’s innate democratic principles selflessness, and great magnanimity, yet, in fact, this is just an awkward literary juggling, with the author himself running ‘in-between rains’: the fear of making Lenin appear flawed and the fear of making him appear too significant for the revolution and thus overshadowing the role of Stalin. In 1940s, as Stalin foresees and fears the imminent war, a need to create a more humane image of the leadership arose. Therefore, a more humane, sympathetic Lenin can be seen onstage, a Lenin who is a creator of the new, not just a destroyer of the old. Pogodin's “The Kremlin Chimes” (Kremliovskie Kuranty) (1940), the second play of his Lenin trilogy, presents Lenin as a dreamer and a peacemaker. It is the end of the Civil War, the dawn of the Soviet regime, and Lenin — instead of occupying himself with important governmental issues — visits peasant izbas, making friends with peasant children, or promenades with the protagonist Rybakov, conversing with him on emotional issues and advising him to love “like in the old times”. When he finally chooses to interact with the “proletariat”, it is the workers who convince him of the power and omnipotence of the Soviet regime, rather than the converse. Lenin confesses                                                                                                                 73  Alexander  Shtein,  “Mezhdu  Dozhdiami”  in  Plays.  Volume  I  (Moscow:  Iskusstvo,  1968),  54.     44   to Rybakov: “я вам по секрету скажу... иногда я мечтаю... Разгуливаю один и рисую перед собой невиданные вещи. Башню до небес мы строить не будем, но с нашими людьми можно дерзать, можно мечтать...”74 (“I will tell you a secret… sometimes I dream… i walk alone and I imagine unbelievable things. We will not build any sky-high towers, but with our people one can dare, one can dream…”) True to this encapsulation of his character, Lenin manifests a unique understanding of the engineer Zabelin who protests and rebels against the new system; instead of punishing him, he “converts” him, and in the finale the happy, enlightened engineer is ready to engage in the project of Russia’s electrification. This is definitely a completely different Lenin – not the determined, fierce, hawk-eyed leader of the revolution, but a mellow, peaceful, and sentimental “grandpa Lenin”, a Soviet incarnation of Santa Claus. Thus, the myth of Lenin experiences a double removal from its sign. In following Barthes’ assumption that materials of mythical speech are reduced to a signifying function when caught by a myth (“That which is a sign in the first system, becomes a mere signifier in the second,”75) “Lenin” first becomes a signifier of his own myth — the myth of the Revolution symbol — and then a signifier for the myths of others. To achieve revitalization, the Lenin cult required a pause – a moment of complete oblivion that permitted a rupture of the vicious circle of violation. Such a break was naturally provided by World War II, which eliminated even mass political holidays, with the exception of the October 1941 parade, which strives to show the defense capacity of                                                                                                                 74  Nikolai  Pogodin,  “Kremliovskie  Kuranty”  in  Trilogy  (Moscow:  Hudozhestvennaya  Literatura,   1969),  110.   75  Roland  Barthes,  Mythologies  (New  York:  Hill  &  Wang,  1972),  114.     45   the Soviet Union.76 The focus shifted completely, as Lenin was forgotten and overshadowed by a new heroic narrative, that of the holy Patriotic War. Then, more than a decade later, Khrushchev publicly denounced Stalin, and the Patriotic War narrative, which had been inextricably connected with Stalin, had to subside for awhile. Since “nature abhors a vacuum”, the gaping hole in the State mythology had to be filled with something, and Khrushchev turned to the only obvious option: the resurrection of the Lenin cult. It seems that since “culture 1” – that which created the Lenin myth – took over again, it could “unlock” the myth from a point of common understanding, ridding it of its accumulated superfluous shells and reuniting the separated halves of its signifier and signified. However, this was but a desperate attempt to rekindle the fire, to reutilize once again this abused, worn down myth. The 60s Lenin is represented either as a grand and imposing titanic statue, or as a kindly, soft, approachable figure: the “Grandpa Lenin” that was mostly emphasized in the Lenin pioneer sub-cult.) New colors and shades were thus needed to diversify the figure of the undead leader and make it more complex. Quite a few plays were written to fulfill this social “commission”. Alexey Kapler’s “The Storm Year” (Grozovoi God), set in the midst of the Civil War, is at first glance reminiscent of Pogodin’s “Gunman”. Just like Pogodin, Kapler seems to be justifying the cruelties of the 1920s, portraying Lenin’s battle with the oppositionists and enemies of the new regime. However, the pathos of the play is different: Lenin here is forced to be harsh with the “kulaks” who hide bread and speculate on prices, since he is struggling to feed the people during times of hunger. In general, everything that Lenin does in this play is dictated by his love of humanity,                                                                                                                 76  Christal  Lane,  The  Rites  of  Rulers:  Rituals  in  Industrial  Society  –  The  Soviet  Case  (Cambridge:   Cambridge  University  Press,  1984),  181.     46   whether it is finding a home for an abandoned child, or ordering Dzerzhinsky to build ten orphanages. This is a portrait of a selfless man who lives for others and for others' happiness. Lenin as an active character is not given so much space, yet throughout the entire play many characters in different degrees of proximity to Lenin tell their personal stories of him. “Мы расскажем вам о Ленине. Мы знали его. Мы видели Ленина совсем близко, как человека, с которым встречаешься каждый день, которого видишь вот так вот – рядом с собой, слышишь его голос, ощущаешь тепло руки.”77 (“We will tell you of Lenin. We used to know him. We saw Lenin from up close, as a person one meets everyday, we saw him that close, we heard his voice, we felt the warmth of his hand. ”) The accent here is on showing Lenin's remarkable qualitieswithout the distancing that is inevitably linked to his “saintly” status; this play is about Lenin the person: an extraordinary person, but still a person. Dmitry Zorin’s play “The Eternal Spring” (Vechnyi Istochnik), written in 1956, also looks into a more personal aspect of Lenin’s life. The action takes place in 1922 in a village in central Russia. Lenin happens to wander there hiding from the rain after a hunting expedition — a completely mundane, even aristocratic hobby — and befriends the villagers for a day. During the course of the day he defends a little girl, who is being teased by malicious children, pacifies a jealous husband and intervenes in other insignificant details in the village life. This Lenin is modern, soft and tolerant: he philosophizes on the life that he envisions for the peasants — which does not preclude becoming rich and modernized — and, while helping the protagonist create a kolkhoz, scolds his gubprokomissar for being too harsh, accusing him of trying to build a                                                                                                                 77  Alexey  Kapler,  Grozovoy  God  (Moscow:  Glavnoe  Upravlenie  Teatrov  Ministerstva  Kultury  SSSR,   1957),  68.       47   dictatorship, not a socialist society. In this play Lenin is a prophet: wise, kind, approachable and responsive to the troubles of the smallest, most insignificant people of the Narod. In “Tret’ia Pateticheskaia” (1958), the play that ends the trilogy, Pogodin jumps to the other extreme, presenting not the flesh and blood Lenin, but Lenin as a symbolic construction. It could be said that this Lenin is not the “father” (God) and not the “son” (Christ), but the holy spirit of the revolution. The events of the play unfold between the spring of 1922 and the winter of 1924. Lenin, far from being the protagonist of the play, is nonetheless constantly on the lips and in the minds of all of the “good characters” As for his actions, he is adamant in the importance given to social context, refusing to forgive a Bolshevik who has «sinned» and would not look into the «personal side» of affairs, and humorous, soft and gentle with his loved ones. Yet his gentleness does not make him accessible; it is an introspective, otherworldly gentleness. This aspect is emphasized in the play when one of the characters remarks after meeting Lenin: “Человек… как я… А дивный.”78 (“He’s a person… just like me… but he’s wondrous all the same.”) In this wistful distance from the material world, we see a tired, melancholy Lenin, not just on the eve of his death but already in 1922: he knows that there are people who doubt his life's work — the revolution — and he dies with this knowledge and disappointment, yet somehow reconciled with it. Even though he is not the central figure in the play, the other characters (even the ones who know him but briefly) feel that «the world is orphaned», the spirit which kindled the revolution has                                                                                                                 78  Nikolai  Pogodin,  “Tret’ia  Pateticheskaia”  in  Trilogy  (Moscow:  Khudozhestvennaya  Literatura,   1969),  165.       48   largely subsided with the death of this man. Thus, the efforts to make Lenin's image believable and corporeal ultimately have a completely different effect. The new Lenin cult followed the same forms, but in a more polished and pervasive way; no area of public life is left untouched. The “trading” of Lenin’s image also gained new popularity: he appeared everywhere from posters to lacquer boxes. In 1967, on the 50th anniversary of October Revolution, the celebrations returned with magnificent splendor, a huge portrait of Lenin being suspended in the sky.79 Indeed, with the reestablishment of the cult, the image of the leader of the Revolution became a commodity on a truly capitalist scale. Thus, this new, more extensive Lenin cult bore more similarities to the Stalin cult that preceded it. Of course, this “heredity” is not surprising, considering that this time the Lenin cult was artificially reestablished to replace the Stalin cult. It would seem that the historical gap between the 1920s and the 1960s could not be overcome without leaving a trace: the return to the original Lenin myth was no longer possible. This ironic attempt to reappropriate the signifier by its long-displaced signified was bound to fail. What the Khruschevian era could offer was not the reacquisition of the lost original signified, but an artificial installation of a fabricated, still-born signified into the gaping hole. The most prolific “Lenin playwright”, Mikhail Shatrov, is considered Pogodin's pupil, yet he surpassed his teacher in writing not three, but more than a dozen plays about the Leader. In the five volumes of Shatrov's collected works only a few plays do not touch upon Lenin and his life; it seems that Shatrov dedicated himself to the role of the last Lenin bard in the pre-perestroika era. In order to reveal unknown nuances of Lenin’s                                                                                                                 79  Lane,  The  Rites  of  Rulers,  184.       49   character and biography, Shatrov placed his plays in different and unexpected periods in his past, and yet in their style and essence the plays all seem to belong to a whole and complete piece, an endless Lenin saga. Considered “rebellious” and provocative when writing and consistently panned by critics, especially the devout Leninists, Shatrov is, nevertheless, widely staged across the Soviet Union by such prominent directors as Zakharov, Efremov, Liubimov and Sturua Making his debut at the very dawn of the Khruschev era in 1957 with his play “In the Name of the Revolution” (Imenem Revoliutsii), Shatrov returned in 1962 with “The Brest Peace” (Brestskii Mir) where he made an attempt to approach documentary drama, a genre that he most fully mastered in his 1964 work “July 6th” (Shestoe Iulia). This play depicts episodes of the struggle between the Soviet goverment and leftist socialist- revolutionaries (esery), attempting to follow historical facts so carefully that it seems almost completely devoid of artistry and of art. In aninterview recorded during the 1980s, Shatrov confessed to his obsession with the factual and the «real», talking of the necessity to recreate the true, “authentic” Lenin. Yet it is precisely the attempt at such a recreation, manifested in a happy acceptance of the imposed narrativization of history and hyper documentation — in fact, pseudo-documentation — that makes Shatrov's plays utterly and blatantly mythical. In his historicisation of theatre, which he achieves through a documentary writing style and the citation of authentic documents, Shatrov treats small, personal episodes in Lenin's life, enlarging them into significant events in the history of the Soviet Union. Such is the idea behind “A Day of Quiet” (Den' Tishiny, 1965), which takes places in a sanatorium in December 1917: the play is rather uneventful, and has no direct connection   50   to the revolution other than Lenin's thoughts, which do not for a minute stray from this subject. Another example is “Thus We Shall Win” (Tak Pobedim), written in the early 80s and depicting fifteen minutes that Lenin spends in his cabinet on October 18th, 1923. This particular play receives full approbation of the government, winning the USSR National Award. Some of Shatrov's plays, however, offer potential for director rearrangement, of which he boldest example would be “Blue Horses on Red Grass” (Sinie Koni na Krasnoi Trave) written in 1970. This play operates on three time planes: an outlook from «today» (the seventies), a window to 1920 and episodes from one day of the beginning of Lenin's physical decline. The Lenin of this play is marked by modesty, warm humor and self- neglect, insofar as he sacrifices his health for the sake of his work. Lenin's stance against violence is reiterated throughout the entire play: in long soliloquies, in conversations with his dear ones and in his scolding of young Comsomol and party members for their misconceptions of the Bolshevik ideology. Lenin's constant worry is that, due to misinterpretations and abuse, such an ugly distortion of Marxism would be accepted as Marxism itself. In short, Lenin is portrayed as a completely innocent figure that has nothing to do with Stalin's terror, or even the terror of the Civil War and the early years. In order to be more convincing, Shatrov utilizes real documents from the 1920s or, rather, excerpts from these documents, though they are, of course, carefully selected and often drawn out of context. Mark Zakharov, directing this play at the legendary Lenkom in 1979, not only modified, but almost completely reworked the play. Zakharov had never shared Shatrov's   51   sympathies towards Lenin80 and he did all that was permissible in the Brezhnev era to retain the visibility of following the play, while, in fact, using its form and surface to “show the finger”. Thus, the actors play not the roles themselves, but their ways of relating to their roles, in an almost Brechtian manner. The acclaimed actor Oleg Yankovskii, who played Lenin, wore a black jacket and used neither fake beard nor make up. He later remarked: “Я не играю здесь образ Ленина. Я играю свое отношение к нему, переломленное сквозь призму сегодняшнего дня.”81 (“I am not playing Lenin’s image here. I am playing my own attitude towards Lenin, seen through the prism of the present day.”) As a result of this distanced performance, it seemed at times that the actor was challenging the integrity of Lenin's words, just as he was challenging the integrity of the entire text. Thus, instead of vindicating Lenin, the performance played with authorial intention. There is conceivably something in the play's texture that allowed the possibility of this interpretation. Considering its two structuring devices — the 'contemporary times', which are part of the play, and the stage direction explicitly indicating the absence of make up for the actors — we are left to wonder whether Shatrov deliberately left those «gaps» in his texts. In contrast “On, On, On” (Dal’she, Dal’she, Dal’she), written in 1986 at the beginning of the glasnost period, and published in “Znamia” in 1988, causing a stormy polemic, leaves no doubts about the authorial position. In this play the character of Lenin himself vehemently attempts to prove that there is no connection between Lenin’s October Revolution and the bloody Stalinist rule that followed. The complex structure of the play enables the simultaneous existence of temporal and atemporal planes: the latter                                                                                                                 80  Mikhail Shatrov, Intervoew to Klutura Channel (1992).   81  Mikhail Shatrov, Tvorchestvo. Zhizn'. Dokumenty. Sochinenia, Volume III (Moscow: Bond, 2006), 130.;   henceforth cited as Shatrov, Volume III, followed by page number.   52   plane, representing a trial, allows the characters to exist outside of time while retaining an omniscient perspective on history. In this unofficial trial, Stalin is proclaimed guilty. Lenin himself is not only completely above suspicions, but is constantly shown as a deeply responsible, moral individual. He actively denounces Stalin, Trotsky and the rest of the party for defaming his life’s work. It seems that the main goal of the play is to show Lenin’s disgust with Stalin, which the playwright believed would be as strong as his own. In the very end only Stalin and Lenin remain onstage, and the directions explain that Lenin waits for Stalin to leave, but to no avail. Stalin tries “to explain” this one last time, but Lenin cuts him short with a hand gesture and, addressing the audience, tells them to go “on… on… on…” The last sentence, more of an author’s remark than a direction, states: “Очень хочется, чтобы Сталин ушел. Но пока что он на сцене.”82 (“One really wants Stalin to leave. But meanwhile he’s still onstage.”) In this way, “Lenin” does not conceal that it is Stalin who disappointed him, not the ideology; it is the execution that is at fault, not the idea. “Социализм – да! Все осуществленные социалистические преобразования – да! Методы Сталина – нет! Нравственность по Сталину – нет!”83 (“Socialism – yes! All implemented socialistic reforms – yes! Stalin’s methods – no! Morality according to Stalin – no!”) The October Revolution is not only fully justified, but endowed with a new, fresh meaning in Lenin’s last endearing speech: Октябрьская революция посеяла такие семена, которые рано или поздно, всегда будут давать всходы. Октябрь в душах людей не поддается корчевке. Даже в самые страшные годы наши люди                                                                                                                 82  Shatrov,  Volume  III,  89.   83  Ibid,  83.     53   сохраняли масло в светильниках. И именно это делает наши жизни, тех, кто начинал, не бессмысленными.84 October Revolution has sown such seeds, which will sonner or later give rise to crops. October in people's souls cannot be rooted up. Our people have kept the oil in the lamps even throughout the most frightening years. And this is what makes our lives – the lives of those who started this – not meaningless. In a 1988 interview, Shatrov repeated the thought of his character, confessing that to consider the October Revolution altogether evil would make the lives of his generation meaningless. If Khrushchev strategically used Lenin to get rid of Stalin, Shatrov used Stalin to “save” Lenin, whitening the latter by blackening the former, thus attempting to reverse the initial appropriation of the Lenin myth. The October revolution, mentioned in Lenin’s soliloquy, is a desperate resort to the mythologem, which was so tightly linked to the original sign of the “Lenin” icon. The message encoded in the revoked originating myth is an appeal to its performative quality —hence the performatively inclusive nature of the language of the monologue — the attempt to submerge the readers/audience in the emotional experience of the event, to recreate an already fragmented collective identity. Another play of the perestorika period — the little known “Enemy of the People” (Vrag Naroda) (1989) by Oleg Agraniants — makes a first awkward attempt to criticize Lenin. Act I takes place at the very beginning of World War I in Europe and follows the hardships of exile for Lenin and Krupskaia. The second act jumps to Petrograd in 1917, and thus the disgraced, pitiable Lenin is contrasted with his powerful, majestic reincarnation. If in the first act, he is filled with doubts and at times self-critical, in the second he is reborn into an entirely different individual. Such a sudden shift, represented                                                                                                                 84  Shatrov,  Volume  III,  86.     54   with a lack of psychological nuances, is not very convincing, but it is definitely critical, as shown by Lenin’s order: Всех тех, кто мешает новой власти, следует немедленно арестовать. У буржуазии немедленно изъять все ценность, для этой цели брать заложников и не проявлять никакого либерализма. Решительно пресекать все контрреволюционные вылазки. При первом же подозрении расстреливать. Расстреливать, расстреливать, расстреливать…85 All those who hinder the new authorities should be immediately arrested. Take all valuables away from the bourgeoisie, for that purpose take hostages and show no liberalism. Supress decisively all counterrevolutionary raids. Shoot away upon first suspicion. Shoot away, shoot away, shoot away… The repetition of the last word gives a sense of Lenin’s certain sadistic pleasure at terror and excludes the convenient version of a great leader fulfilling his duty of battling his enemies (which is often used to “excuse” Lenin’s “sternness”). In the end, when Armand exclaims that she would like to live long enough to see life in twenty years, in 1937, to see for herself how happy and free people will be, it is supposed to make the audience — already well aware of the meaning of 1937 — shudder Stalin then echoes this fearful apprehension of the future, which is known to be past, by declaring that the history of the country will from now on evolve according to the rules of socialism. While Lenin’s “shoot away, shoot away, shoot away” still rings in the ears, it is not hard to guess why the country has taken such a course. For the first time in the history of Russian drama, the entire fault is not put upon Stalin, and Lenin receives his portion of criticism. Moreover, the image of Lenin’s sanctity and supreme spirituality is destroyed in a serious breach of taboo, as the author mentions Lenin's shameful and all too corporeal disease: “Хорошенькое дело! Вождь партии, несгибаемый марксист околевает от сифилиса.                                                                                                                 85  Oleg  Agraniants,  “Vrag  Naroda”  in  Plays  (London:  Overseas  Publications  Interchange  Ltd.,  1989),   98.     55   Позор.”86 (“How lovely! The Leader of the Party, an unrelenting Marxist is dying from syphilis. What a disgrace!”) And yet, this attempt to undermine the myth only marks another change in the appropriation of the signifier; this time, it is appropriated by the intelligentsia of the Perestroika era. Indeed, the agenda pursued by Agraniants is reminiscent of that found in Alexander Solzhenytsyn's writings on Lenin: the author of Archipelag-Gulag represents Lenin as the source of all trouble and evil in taking the land away from the peasants and initiating the bloodshed: – in this way, Stalin's responsibility is diminished. Such an appropriation of the «Lenin myth» for the vindication of “Stalin” is exactly the opposite of the Khrushevian appropriation and makes sense within the context of the late 80s when the desire of confronting the past clashed with the desire to retain an imperial consciousness. Naturally, sacrificing the icon of a distant and non- relevant Revolution happened to be a lot easier than refuting the icon of the “Soviet Empire”. After the fall of the Soviet Union, «culture 1» and its aesthetic returned to dominance in Russia yet again, after the supremacy of “culture 2” during the Brezhnev era and the «times of troubles» during perestroika. The relocation of the «Lenin» myth into a cultural context similar to that which created it tempts playwrights to reexplore the myth from contemporary perspectives. Such is the case of Andrei Maksimov's “The Shepherd” (Pastukh) written in 1998. The only two characters are Lenin and a woman — probably the creation of Lenin’s own imagination — who impersonates all of the important women in his life (Krupskaia, Armand, Iakubovich) by a simple change of wigs. In a dialogue with this multi-faced ghost woman, Lenin relives and reconsiders his                                                                                                                 86  Agraniants,  “Vrag  Naroda”,  83.     56   life and relationships. The topics of conversations are mostly of a personal nature, and provide a survey of Lenin's affairs of the heart. In fact, this sentimental, even melodramatic, play could be subtitled “Lenin and his women”.) The author creates the impression that Lenin’s perception of himself as a pathetic failure is the source of his future thirst for revenge. On top of that, Lenin’s strange confession rings with anti- Semitic allusions to his Jewish origins, a thought that was very popular in the 90s: Этого – на столб! А этого – заодно! Только так можно разбудить эту страну и сломать ее! Этого – к стенке, и этого, а этого – заодно! […] И тебя тоже – на столб, к стенке! За мои рыжие волосы, за короткие ноги, за букву “р”, за отца моего…Не забуду это все! Не забуду! Лениным назовусь, чтобы не забыть.87 Hang that one on a post! And take the other one with him! That’s the only way to waken this country and break it! Put that one against the wall and shoot him, and the other one also! […] And you also – up the post, against the wall! For my red hair, for my short legs, for the letter “r”, for my father… I won’t forget any of it! I won’t forget! I will call myself Lenin, lest I forget. This Lenin character is strangely self-conscious; even more importantly, he is conscious of his own mythological status and desperately craves it. He expresses his wish to be the shepherd of mankind and passionately asks Krupskaia to make him God, at least a temporary one: “Чтоб портреты мои висели – только не в углу: как иконы, а на каком-нибудь самом видном месте, чтобы люди моим именем клялись, чтобы с именем моим шли куда-нибудь – лучше, конечно, на казнь…”88 (“So that my portraits are up high – but not in the corner like icons, but in the most visible place, so that people make oaths using my name, so that one walks somewhere with my name on his lips – preferably, to a beheading…”) By making his protagonist so omniscient,                                                                                                                 87  Andrei  Maksimov,  “Pastukh”  in  Den’  Rozhdenia  Sinei  Borody  i  Drugie  Istorii  o  Liubvi  (Moscow:   Delovoi  Ekspress,  2004),  416.   88  Maksimov,  “Pastukh”,  425.     57   Maksimov merges Lenin’s voice with his own authorial voice, creating a lack of verisimilitude. Lenin is so openly and overtly the anti-hero, so innocently evil, that the result is not a demythologization, but a negative mythology, that is i.e. another variety of an appropriation, which fails to retrieve the integral sign and is bound to position the abused signifier as the entire myth. The only successful moment in the play is the surprising mock-buffoonery that occurs when the nameless, mysterious woman wears yet another wig — one with a bald spot — and becomes Lenin himself. She taunts him and plays with him, as she is playing him, speaking with his recognizable accent, talking in quotes from his select works. She is so convincing that finally even Lenin exclaims: “Ты играешь меня лучше, чем всех моих женщин!”89 (“You play me better than you play all of my women!”) This is precisely the point: playing “Lenin” is easiest, since the shattered, mutilated myth has turned into a coded system of clichés. Showing how easily a myth can be reconstructed is, ironically, one of the most effective ways to approach a deconstruction. Mihail Ugarov’s “April’s Green Cheeks: First Day Opera” (Zelionnye Shchioki Aprelia: Opera Pervogo Dnia), written a year later in 1999, distances itself altogether from the particular historical figure and the rhetoric of Lenin. The action takes place in April 1916 on a lake in Zurich, yet it is uncertain who the characters are. Even though they call each other “Nadia” and “Volodia”, they are signified by the author as Lisitsyn and Krupa: “Лисицын – маленький, рыжеватый… …она же никакая, оплывшая, неуклюжая, держится деревянно…”90 (“Lisitsyn – smallish, red-hairish… …she is nothing special, corpulent, clumsy, her motions are wooden…”) The information                                                                                                                 89  Maksimov,  “Pastukh”,  427.   90  Mikhail  Ugarov,  “Zelionnye  Shchioki  Aprelia:  Opera  Pervogo  Dnia”  in  Maiskie  Chtenia  Literary   Almanac  1  (1999):  74.     58   provided (including the stage direction about the woman’s “goggled eyes”) suggests that the characters are Lenin and Krupskaya, but this is only hinted. In fact, the character of Krupskaia is made more easily recognizable than that of Lenin, since her name in the play is an abbreviation of her real surname. This refusal to name Lenin is a deliberate rebellion against the religious abuse of his name that has become a definite part of his mythology; It should be understandable to every reader, even if uneducated, who the protagonist is, but this information is not pinpointed. This game of silence and intimation with the reader/audience suggests the possibility of doubt as an option and provides an ironic distance, which guarantees that the signifier of the Lenin myth is left untouched; moreover, for a short time, it becomes the signified reached through a different signifier. Unfortunately, the detached, distanced undertone of the play is spoilt by several moments of coarse realism. One of these instants is the superfluous naturalism of Lenin urinating before the audience and complaining that the last droplet always falls into his underwear. This shocking, scandalous image serves the same purpose as the mention of syphilis by Agraniants: Ugarov intends to belittle and vulgarize the image of the Leader in order to knock it from its pedestal. Yet, ironically, this very concrete physiological action implies that it is, after all, a particular flesh-and-blood man who is at the center of the story; the protagonist ceases to represent a suggestion or an allusion and becomes merely self, bound by his characteristics and particularities, and the signified turns into its old form of a signifier, which automatically leads to another appropriation. However, humor and irony in themselves do not suffice to combat the myth. Indeed, innumerate popular jokes about Lenin have “have penetrated into the most trivial   59   aspect of life,”91 cohabitating with his iconic status. Thus, Lenin’s centenary, with its abundant production of ‘Lenin commodities’, simultaneously produced fresh anecdotes, some of which soon became quotes known to every child: “They all began with the ostensible fact that every enterprise would have to produce some sort of commemorative item: a perfume called ‘Lenin Scent’, or a bed for three inspired by the motto “Lenin Is With Us.”92 While jokes about Stalin were based on a more sinister kind of humor, the jokes about Lenin were usually harmless and good-natured. This was not only due to the fact that the memory of Stalin’s Terror overshadowed any of Lenin’s bloody deeds; certain details of Lenin’s biography — his syphilis, his death from sclerosis (and his last years as a dimwitted plant), even the disproportionately large size of his head —all invited a degree of condescension. Those who wished to undermine Lenin’s status as a cult figure, intuitively employed that undertone. The jokes about Lenin have become an innate, integral part of his myth. Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that such jokes about Lenin cannot be classified as subversive. Yurchak is completely justified in his argument against traditional analysis of the Soviet jokes as examples of resistance to the system: “In the Soviet case, fragmentation is both desideratum and dread; the anecdote always deconstructs a coherent narrative and demands a new one simultaneously.”93 As a new sub-narrative was inadvertently created at the anecdotal level, the aesthetic of the joke was used (despite the intent of the tellers) to produce the same institute of Soviet culture it rebelled against. Moreover, as the anekdoty were heard by a person more than once                                                                                                                 91  Birgit  Beumers,  Pop  Culture  Russia:  Media,  Arts  and  Lifestyle  (Santa  Barbara:  ABC  CLIO,  2005),  173.   92  Andrei  Sinyavskii,  Soviet  Civilization  (New  York:  Arcade  Publishing,  1988),  223.   93  Alexei  Yurchak,  Everything  Was  Forever  Until  It  Was  No  More  (Princeton:  Princeton  University   Press,  2006),  257.     60   (“people took part in the reeling out not only to hear new jokes, or any particular “type” of jokes, but to participate in this enjoyable collective ritual itself…”)94 the production turned into a constant reproduction. The particular word that Yurchak uses in the above quote —“ritual” —which suggests the ritualistic nature of joke-telling in the Soviet Union is indicative of the position of this activity within the mythological frame, and not beyond it. Being part of the larger mythical frame of Lenin, the Lenin joke is unable to hurt the myth or question it. There is, however, a type of joke that is able to obviate this conundrum: that is, the joke, which does not assert itself as a joke. A brilliant example of this is the famous hoax project “Lenin-Grib” by Sergei Kurekhin – the most successful attempt of the 90s to provide an ironical twist to the mythology. This 1991 event took place on Sergei Sholokhov’s half hour TV show “Piatoe Koleso” on the widely watched “Rossia” channel and immediately attracted public attention. A pseudo-scientific conversation between two young men focused on proving to the television audiences that Lenin was a mushroom, and that this was the reason behind the success of the October Revolution. By resorting to old photographs, quotes, and different historical and scientific facts as backup materials, this raving argumentation acquired a certain perverse logic. The reactions of audiences —most of whom did not realize the stiob nature of this broadcast— attested to the success of the hoax. After the spoof story is dispelled, it is generally interpreted as proof of the zombification potential of television for zombification: the average spectator can be made to believe any kind of idiocy if the delivery is made according to a certain aesthetic that conforms to certain academic standards of form and style.                                                                                                                 94  Yurchak,  Everything  Was  Forerver…,  275.       61   However, the choice of this particular taboo object cannot be coincidental. Kuriokhin’s main theory is more than suggestive and metaphorical: a person who eats a particular type of mushroom becomes inhabited by the mushroom’s personality, since the two cannot coexist within one person. The habit of eating mushrooms from early childhood thus means that one’s personality is slowly displaced by that of the mushroom. The entire October Revolution, claims Kurekhin, was organized and performed by mushroom-people with Lenin at their head. Of course, this quite transparently suggests that the revolution could only be a product of possessed people, raving and hallucinating individuals (as dictated by the mushroom’s nature). Yet, Kurekhin’s allusion goes much deeper: the audience’s immediate, unquestioning acceptance of this hoax for truth is an expected result of this game. The presence of Lenin in Russian culture goes so deep, and has acquired so many diverse mythological faces and facets, that any new reincarnation of his persona is believable, no matter how nonsensical it is: and the audience are so brainwashed — being in the “habit of eating mushrooms from early childhood” — that they would eat this additional mushroom unhesitatingly. In short, members of the audience belong to the same “mushroom clan” as the makers of the revolution: they have lived so long inside a bundle of entangled myths that they have become utterly mythical themselves, and their reaction to the TV broadcast is the best proof. The joke that hides its own humor, not revealing its true nature before due time, exposes and disentangles not the myth itself, but the web of mythical thinking around it, demonstrating precisely the process of its creation. Kurekhin’s methods — the use of a distancing irony to effect a complete recontextualization of the sign — may be defined as neo-Conceptualism. His arsenal of tools is very similar to that of his predecessors who   62   established ways of working with resilient Soviet material; only Kuriokhin, in the post- perestroika reality, goes further: after isolating the sign, he subjects it to a layering of irrelevant, superfluous contexts. Instead of laying it bare, he redresses it in blatantly unfitting, absurdly ridiculous garments. Kurekhin’s Lenin is a confused, self-mocking sign. Kurekhin’s neo-conceptualist prank, however, did not appear out of thin air. The “Lenin-Grib” project was distinctly linked to, and grounded by, a Conceptualist text by Venedikt Erofeev – Moia Malen’kaia Leniniana.95 Even though not all of Erofeev’s work should be classified as Conceptualist, this selection of quotations, numbering but a few pages, is definitely related to Conceptualist aesthetics. Moreover, this is a very concentrated, even purist Conceptualist effort. The entire text consists of quotations by Lenin, arranged chronologically from 1896 to 1922; Erofeev labels this progression of selected quotes as the time period during which Lenin slowly “unlearned” how to write, and this is the only authorial remark. Thus, with the exception of one sentence, Erofeev uses exclusively documentary, historical material to craft his message. In the beginning, the citations he chooses either ironically contrast with Lenin’s ideology (for instance, his complaint of a lack of servants in Siberia or his comment that Paris is a disgusting dump) or offer prosaic reflections that have nothing at all to do with any ideology (a description of him and “Nadia” riding bicycles or skating). Interspersed with absurd sounding musings on free love and a quote that which shows that Lenin did not remember Stalin’s last name, the sequence of citations carefully constructs an image that is completely opposed to the canonical Lenin icon. De- and re-contextualized                                                                                                                 95  Victor  Erofeev,  “Moia  Malenkaia  Leniniana”.  In  Sobranie  Sochinenii  v  Dvukh  Tomakh.  Tom  2   (Moscow:  Vagrius,  2007).       63   utterances create a parodic version of “Lenin”, almost an anecdotal one; even when the nature of the quotes is slowly subverted, becoming more sinister, to reveal the post- revolution merciless, scourging Lenin. However, Erofeev’s mission is not the revelation of the “unknown” Lenin or of his grotesque sides. In the spirit of the Conceptualists, the author engages in a game with history and historical representation, and his work constitutes another attempt to counter history, similar to that of Bitov, an archaeological fragmentation of the arch-narrative, an open manifestation of the whimsical ways in which a myth is created and recreated. Erofeev’s and Kurekhin’s treatments of the Lenin myth created a certain tradition, which continued in 1993 by the playwright Victor Denisov in “Six Specters of Lenin on a Piano” (Shest’ Prizrakov Lenina Na Roiale). The play’s plot is so fantastical and uncommon that it deserves a short description. In the prologue, a painter (supposedly Dali, the author of the famous eponymous painting) and a spectator turn into a piano professor and his student in the midst of a failed lesson. The Student claims that she cannot play, since ants have crawled all over the score, and she cannot see the notes. The Professor does not see the ants (or pretends not to) and tries to send the Student home. The Student refuses to leave, desperately trying to prove she is right, even as the Professor threatens to abandon her altogether. At the culmination of their passionate argument, the Professor falls down, submerged in a deep sleep, while the ants transform into Specters and appear from under the grand piano’s top. Even though Lenin’s name is not mentioned anywhere in the play, the specters are quite obviously six incarnations of Lenin: the Leader, the Prophet, the Practitioner, the Monument, the Original and the Portrait.   64   The specters desire to rearrange the grand piano — to perfect it (as they claim), but, in fact, to destroy it — by breaking off the pedals and screwing them onto the keyboard. Their arguments are random, but passionate and scary in their pseudo- logicality and demagogy. The student rises to defend the piano in an unequal battle with a band of confirmed psychopaths. She tries to talk sense to them, to talk them round, to distract them, but — having lost the hope of convincing, buying or scaring her — they throw her from the room and continue to break the piano. When the professor wakes up, he plays along with the specters and tries to ingratiate himself. When the piano is ultimately destined for destruction, Beethoven’s music suddenly breaks into the room and makes the specters disappear (it is hard to miss the parallel with vampires who disappear at the break of dawn). In the epilogue, the Professor, who has turned back into the painter, – is left together with the Portrait, the only specter who refuses to leave the stage. Denisov’s overall aesthetic is grounded to an underdeveloped line of Russian drama: the Gogolian tradition. This particular humorous grotesque has been developed mainly by two playwrights: one of them — Nikolai Erdman — was destroyed (as a writer by the Soviet system, the other one — Evgenii Shvarts — was created by it. Denisov, who considered Shvarts to be one of his principal teachers in art, adapts two main Shvartzian devices of the grotesque (which are, in fact, borrowed from the Gogolian tradition): misplaced language and misplaced physicality (the distorted body). Shvarts’s characters (particularly in Drakon (The Dragon) and Ten’ The Shadow) regularly lapse into alogism, hyperbole or excessive, meaningless speech. In the world of these two plays — a corrupted world ruled by corrupted people — language itself has been corrupted; used as a means for lying, denying and covering up, it has lost its initial purpose.   65   The language of the Schvartzian play world is, of course, a reflection of Soviet language; the estranged, crippled language described by Siniavskii: It is a word divorced from its original meaning. It is an emasculated language in which words do not denote things but symbols or conceptions, accepted by the State, but often without any relation to reality. <…> The normalized language of Soviet society is that of the clichés…96 Equally removed from its origin and devoid of meaning, the Shvartsian language shares the tendency of Soviet language to renaming everything using labels that indicate only a potential meaning. This language denounces itself, fabricating a series of inflated signifiers that cover up for the absence of the signified; it produces not just empty, but mutated signs. This is, in fact, mythological language per excellence. By recontextualizing this language and forcing it to show its destitution and inadequacy, Svarts is laying it bare, forestalling the work of the Russian Conceptualists. In Six Specters language, too, is the main means of manipulation. The Original — an anthropomorphized book of Lenin quotations —blurts out citations whenever the Leader’s arguments fall weak. Those comments are often used out of place and seem like complete non sequiturs, but it is precisely their misplaced, absurd quality that gives them an infernal power to turn the conversation the other way. This destitution and depravity of speech is used as a strength. The Leader, on the other hand, is a skillful demagogue: while the Practitioner breaks the pedals off the piano, the Leader, arguing with the Student, claims: “он не ломает, он откручивает. Надеюсь, разница понятна?”97 (“He’s not breaking it off, he’s screwing it off. I hope you understand the difference.”) Of course, as far as the piano’s mechanism is concerned, screwing the pedals off is breaking                                                                                                                 96  Andrei  Sinyavskii,  Soviet  Civilization  (New  York:  Arcade  Publishing,  1988),  203.   97  Victor  Denisov,  “Shest’  Prizrakov  Lenina  na  Roiale”  in  Shest’  Prizrakov  Lenina  na  Roiale  I  Drugie   P’esy  (Moscow:  Agar,  1998),  137.     66   them; yet in the Leader’s thinking, words freely take on the meaning attributed to them: the empty signifier gladly takes in any wandering signified. Likewise, the Leader claims that the specters possess the piano, since they play it. This very flawed logic is symbolic of the play’s entire semantic situation: whoever successfully plays with language possesses it and wins the argument. This is why the Student, who is honest, earnest and takes words and meanings literally does not manage to gain the upper hand on the specters who constantly resort not only to cheap tricks of language distortion but to simple witticisms. Just like Shvarts, Denisov reflects the problems and characteristics of Soviet speech: the specters, just like the typical Soviet narrative, mediate between the talk of the “people”—a more colloquial form of speech — and the ideologically “conscious” language of the state. Just as the official jargon assimilated and reappropriated competing modes of languages, so do the specters with the speech of the Student: by constantly repeating her lines and then reformatting them to change the meaning, they swallow her speech and return it to her in distorted form, forcing her to participate in their mode of communication, where she stands no chance of winning. These constant repetitions and meaningless reproductions of words do not only precisely fit into the definition of the grotesque (the world of possible normalcy is threatened by some prodigious tendency to self-repetition and unbounded growth98); they are the epitome of mythological reproduction, the demonstration of a pattern through its repetition. Another typical Gogolian characteristic in Schvarts is the “bringing to life” of idiomatic expressions. The phantasmal reality concealed behind the concrete world is                                                                                                                 98Bert  O.  States,  Irony  and  Drama:  A  Poetics  (Ithaca  &  London:  Cornell  University  Press,  1971),  77.     67   revealed when the metaphor is read literally. This particular device is yet another game of distortion with language, yet — since the externalization is physical and chooses the body as an object — it borders on the theme of misplaced physicality. If in Dead Souls characters possess one grotesque feature, which is monstrously deformed, the characters in The Shadow are marked by certain physical characteristics that are symbolic of their inner qualities. For instance, the scholar’s near-sightedness suggests his naivete and failure to see reality clearly. In Denisov’s play, the specters similarly represent different images of Lenin: the tireless, hyperactive Leader, the self-assured Prophet, the dumb and merciless Practitioner, the pompous Monument, the Original who talks in citations and the “naïve” simpleton Portrait. These are the various cultural stereotypes of Lenin’s image that are rooted in the country’s consciousness, the numerous faces of Lenin that have been diligently created by armies of writers, dramatists and politicians. In The Dragon, the townspeople reveal themselves to be the extension of the Dragon’s body that broke into thousands of pieces, just as Lenin also remained in the memory not in one, whole piece, but in six incarnations. In Russian, all of them begin with the letter “P”, which suggests that they are similar despite their external differences, and that they are pale replicas of the original name, the symbol long since turned into a commodity. The name of each character stands for their dominant inner quality: the signifier dictates the content; the mythologized persona is merely an icon, established through layers of memory and signification, hinting again at the superficial nature of everything that it critically examined in this play. both language and identity are revealed to be of a mythological nature. Curiously, in this case, the two are closely related, since the existence of identity is dependent upon on language. When a myth is subjected   68   to a mythological language — the largest mythology of all — a double myth is created; its nature originally presupposes that the signifier stands for a different signified, and as the myth — as word — becomes a signifier in itself, it becomes doublyempty. This split of Lenin into six different characters is a concise, accurate reflection of the way in which the Lenin myth has become a signifier for other myths and ideologies. The clearest Schvartzian homage to Gogol is in his rendering of the concept of “soul” corporeal. In the most famous quote from the play the Dragon says: “Безрукие души, безногие души, глуxонемые души, цепные души, легавые души, окаянные души. Дырявые души, продажные души, прожженые души, мертвые души.”99 (“Armless souls, legless souls, dumb-and-mute souls, chained souls, cop-like souls, damned souls. Hollowed souls, corrupt souls, hard-boiled souls, dead souls.”) The soul can be mutilated, burnt or sprained, as if it were a bodily organ. This twist at once continues the physicalization of metaphor in its extreme form and merges into the realm of the displaced body: in this case the body expands to assume metaphysical aspects. Denisov both follows this idea and reverses it. On the one hand, the specters are no more than dangerously materialized ideas of Lenin. On the other, it is an inanimate object — the grand piano — that seems to possess more spirit than the people in the play. It is not by accident that when the Student’s attempt to save the situation fails it is music, a melody that manages to scare the specters away. In the performance of the play staged by Andrey Rossinsky in 1996 the physical grand piano is divided into two parts: both the piano top and the keyboards stand center stage, and the music stand, where the score is placed, are situated in the corner. This arrangement subtly alludes to the separation of the                                                                                                                 99  Evgenii  Shvarts,  “Drakon”  in  Three  Plays  (New  York:  Pergamon  Press,  1972),  188.     69   body — the piano mechanism — and the soul — the musical score, which animates the piano, and gives it life. Consequently, while the specters take up all of the space on the piano, demonstrating their power and in a way forcing themselves on the piano’s “body”, the “soul” remains untouched and clean as the specters never attempt to play the score, replacing it with their own “music”. What ultimately connects the grotesque body with the grotesque speech is the idea of the automaton: both empty speech and the distanced body (that is, the body as a metaphor) are devices of dehumanization. While Gogol only hints at the automative aspect of his characters and generally restricts the motif to Dead Souls), Schvartz employs this form quite directly. The tyrant is represented as a dragon, one of the characters in The Shadow is an ogre, and the limbs of the Minister of Finances are operated by his servants, although here, perversely, the marionette manipulates its puppeteers, giving them precise directions. The “inhuman” in Six Specters is transmitted by the specters, who are inherently inhuman. By gaining a monopoly on speech, they succeed in subduing the Student, who slowly but surely becomes a victim of the same alogisms, repetitions and verbosity that is characteristic of the mythological language used by the specters. Thus, though the Student never stops resisting, her speech is made into a “puppet” of the specters. If the Student falls into the specters’ trap unwillingly, the Professor loses his human aspect quite consciously. Just like the Scholar in The Shadow, the Professor is the reflection of the Soviet intelligentsia, which for decades was “forced to play on a “perfected piano” by ant-like people”. Like the near-sighted Scholar, the Professor is oblivious to reality. Waking up and seeing the Student being abused by the specters, he   70   does not defend her, but rather greets the apparitions with sympathy and seeks their approval and acceptance. He fails to notice their rudeness, their lack of manners, and — most importantly — the fact that they are about to destroy his instrument. He consents to close his eyes to their actions, as long as they humor him. It is hard to believe that a music professor cannot see the difference between Chopin and dreadful cacophony, yet he pretends to like the music that the Practitioner bangs on the piano. The Student is defeated by being forced to reproduce the specters’ speech; the Professor chooses to reproduce their actions. By participating in their dance and by collaborating in the destruction of his own piano, he becomes one of them. As if infected by the spirit of the specters, he lets go of his own. Having betrayed all his principles, he has emptied out his “content”, leaving behind an empty shell of words and actions; as a soulless exterior, a replica, he has not only dehumanized himself to become an automaton: he has become a specter, which means that he has reduced himself to a myth. The ease and eagerness with which the Professor allows his own transformation suggests that he is not so innocent: when in the beginning of the play he denies seeing the ants altogether, he is not earnest, but pretends to be oblivious to the unpleasant reality before him. This realization is what gives the fundamentally ironic play its tragic undertone, which does not compromise its grotesqueness; as States remarks: “the grotesque seems to exert a “drag” on tragedy”, i.e. the grotesque as a form must inherently include the tragic in order to operate with it.100 The seriousness is seconded by the playwright himself who admits that one of the impulses that drove him to write the play in 1993 was the political background, and the decisive year in the conflict between                                                                                                                 100  States,  Irony  and  Drama,  78.     71   Yeltsin and Ziuganov. Denisov invites the spectators not only to reflect, but also to make their own choice: to become specters or not. The famous final words of the knight Lancelot in The Dragon (“в каждом из ниx нужно будет убить дракона”) are transformed into the following utterance by the seemingly harmless Portrait, who stubbornly stays onstage: “Я в тебе – вот и сижу. Я – в тебе.”101 (“I’m inside you, so I just sit there. I’m inside you.”) He suggests that the Painter (his creator) should walk to the storage room; having exhausted himself on this dubious creation, the Portrait suggests that the Painter is no longer good for anything. Since the Painter readily sccepts it, they walk offstage hand in hand. Yet, is the Painter the only addressee of the Portrait's words? We must also take into account the Russian people (including those in the audience) who have “been creating” Lenin's image —or, in fact, several images— for decades. Clearly, Lenin is still in them and with them. The playwright's offer to consider their life positions turns into a quite vicious attack: surely, they are good for nothing, appropriate only for the storage room. Here, one cannot help but recall Moses who led his people through the deserts for 40 years, just so that the generation that could still recall the Egyptian slavery, died out. Would that mean, then, that the writer who writes about Lenin’s six incarnations —just like the Painter who paints it— is also inhabited by Lenin and part of this vicious circle of appropriation? Even worse, if we consider the play to be an extended metaphor of the eponymous painting, Denisov figures as one who “reflects the reflection”, engaging in the “copy of the copy of the copy”. This is, yet again, the notorious, mythical reproductive pattern, the inability to stay outside of the myth, the trap of the “mise-en-                                                                                                                 101  Denisov,  Six  Specters,  149.     72   abyme”. Curiously, many of the critics who write about the show adopt its rhetoric, concluding that “Lenin is with us”. The utilization of this particular old Soviet joke to signify Lenin’s presence in society leaves the criticism within the system, not outside or above it: the “specter spirit” continues to spread. However, does the play really leave us so hopeless and caged, with no chance of escaping or of developing an immune resistance? In Denisov’s play (just as in Shvarts’ plays), the manipulation of memory, leading to a manipulation of cognition, operates through language. The infiltration mechanism is constructed from the constant process of rearranging the space of knowledge and the manipulation of speech; it operates purely on the verbal level. Quite logically, the music, which comes from nowhere, breaks the specters’ hypnotism and makes them disappear; since it is non-verbal and inapproachable in verbal terms, it is inherently resistant to any kind of mythology. This is the greatest hint that the play offers: salvation lies in a realm that cannot be reproduced by another simulacrum. Due to the corruptive nature not just of this particular language, but of any kind of language, the only way of avoiding the trap is to choose an impenetrable, opaque medium, one that cannot be reduced to a formula. The moment when the music begins to play — chasing the specters away — offers (if rightly performed) a catharsis for the audience. While textual means oriented towards a battle with myth are inherently vulnerable since the weapon consists of the same material as the target, performance, on the other hand, has a clear advantage in the possibility of a resort to nonverbal means.102                                                                                                                 102  A  text  written  to  be  performed  contains  a  performative  intention  and  should  be  considered  as  a   performative  text.     73   This unexpected catharsis is supposed to set in motion a very intricate, subtle mechanism that is an integral part of the play’s structure. Such a sudden moment of lucidity, of escape from words sound, leads to a curious realization: interestingly, details that appear as evident dangers may sometimes shrewdly reveal themselves to possess an opposite meaning and intention. Thus, John Freedman’s remark on the sympathetic and even endearing appeal of the Lenins in the performance is not the director’s fatal misreading of the play, but the playwright’s deliberate choice, carefully constructed for a certain effect. As a reader, one cannot help feeling sympathy towards the specters, especially since the Leader is quite charismatic, despite his insane argumentation and intense charge. Moreover, at certain points the reader is forced to repress his annoyance at the Student’s nagging whimpers and at her growing helplessness. As the idea of screwing the pedals off and reattaching them to the keys begins to look amusing, one is almost glad when the specters win the argument over and over again, and when the Professor takes interest in this original, extravagant proposition By the time the Professor awakes, it is easy for the audience to identify with him; when the music suddenly breaks the agitation onstage and the specters disappear, the spectator wakes up from the nightmare together with the play’s characters. The Professor and the Student freeze, facing each other: this is the ultimate moment of audience participation. They realize that—quite like the Professor — they have never considered the nightmare to be a nightmare, up until the moment when it was over, dispersed by a magical melody. They now view their involuntary sympathy with the specters as a forbidden pleasure, yet they fail to understand how they arrived at it, and how they could be so misled. This unflattering realization should hopefully lead to a critical reflection   74   and an understanding of the mythologization process. Just as in the case of the “Lenin – Grib” project, it is the mock-analysis of mythological way of thinking, not of the myth itself, which helps to break out of the myth’s interior. “Six Specters” is a variation of the joke that asserts itself differently: it is a trick, played on the audience, which does not reveal itself until the end. Denisov’s audience (at least, those who are intelligent enough to understand his game) are slightly mocked, yet they are offered a straw to hold on to, they are given a chance to save themselves from drowning in myth. While following the tradition of Gogol and Shvarts, Denisov at the same time joins the Conceptualist Erofeev and the neo-Conceptualist Kurekhin by revealing the mythological sign through a grotesque process of forced internalization. While in post-Soviet Russia the intellectuals were preoccupied with ridding themselves of Lenin’s ghost, the intellectual radical left in the West embraced it with open arms, trying to instill it with new life. The most telling example would be, of course, the writings of Slavoj Zizek. Zizek’s article on Lenin in “Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth” and his introduction to a reprint of Lenin’s selected writings named “Revolution at the Gates” share many overlapping thoughts, ideas and even phrases, all of which strive to revalidate Lenin’s cause. This time, not only are Lenin’s ideas approbated, as is often the case with modern Western Marxists, but his persona is celebrated and reinstated to its primary symbolic status as the icon of the Revolution: “This is the Lenin from whom we still have something to learn. The greatness of Lenin was that in his catastrophic situation he wasn’t afraid to succeed”103 Zizek’s accounts are not theoretical musings, but an unequivocal call for action, and in this sense his language                                                                                                                 103  Slavoj  Zizek,  “Introduction”  in  V.I.  Lenin.  Revolution  at  the  Gates:  Selected  Writings,  ed.  Slavoj  Zizek   (London  and  New  York:  Verson  Publishing,  2002),  6.     75   is as performative as the text of a play. Leninism, for Zizek, is not just a “politics of responsibility”, but a “politics of action” – an alternative to capitalism and imperialism. The adaptation of Lenin to today’s needs reflects the necessity to reinvent the revolutionary project in contemporary times: “The idea is not simply enough to return to Lenin… for we must repeat or reload him: that is, we must retrieve the same impulse in today’s constellation.”104 The terms repeat and reload used by Zizek are indicative of the mythological chafe of this idea: simple repetition is not enough; a reloading is indispensable. A reloading is, in this case, a repositioning of the myth anew, ridding it of its undesirable layers and associations and recharging the core, the initial long lost signified, with relevant meanings. However, since this signified is obstructed and transfigured and the recharging necessity implies the contemporary agenda of the Leftist West, Zizek’s quest is yet another appropriation of the mythological sign. Zizek’s buffoon-like revolutionary texts are an example of the negative potential of the performative dimension, its ability to perpetuate the reproductive pattern innate to a particular myth. Meanwhile, Russian public opinion regarding Lenin’s relevance is slowly changing. True, many Russian provincial towns still count 3- to 4 Lenin monuments, and many of the streets still bear Lenin’s name. However, the FOM population survey on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution showed the dominance of the only attitude worse than hatred: indifference. 40% of the population (which seems like a rather large percentage) are of the opinion that the Revolution had more positive outcomes than negative ones; yet – while 29% percent were of the opposite opinion - 31% had a hard                                                                                                                 104  Sebastian  Budgen  et  al,  ed.,  Lenin  Reloaded:  Towards  a  Politics  of  Truth  (Durhamn  and  London:   Duke  University  Press,  2007),  3.     76   time answering the question, as if not really knowing enough about the Revolution. More importantly, only 9% mentioned Lenin’s name in connection with the Revolution Boris Dubin, the prominent sociologist and the leader of the Levada Center, claims that for most of the population Lenin belongs to history: many still think vaguely positively about the Revolution, since it lead to the formation of the Soviet Union, but there is no identification with the Revolution era; thus, Lenin had ceased to be key figure.105 The “Lenin” who was still frightening in the 90s seems to be no longer relevant in the new millennium. His continued presence in the names of streets and monuments can, in fact, testify not to awe and remembrance, but — in complete contrast — to oblivion and neglect. He has become as outdated and obscure as the members of the Romanov dynasty; the average contemporary young person would know of him from history books and anecdotes and dimly remember he played an important role, but, probably, not much more. By the 2000s, the myth was approaching oblivion precisely because of its familiarity; it resembled a coin, which is so used up that the figures standing for its monetary value are erased. During the 2000s and onwards, “culture 2” has returned with a vengeance: it is not as interested in cultural and historical self-analysis as «culture 1», which ruled in the 90s; it turns the past into stone, ruthlessly cutting off what is no longer needed. Yet, nevertheless, one of the phenomena of the 90s has continued to the present day: namely, the Lenin doubles. The look-alikes and the impersonators have aged, but they still appear on Red Square and at other tourist locations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg to offer entertaining photo opportunities for tourists, as well as for younger                                                                                                                 105  Boris  Dubin,  Interview,  October  11,  2011.     77   Russians. It is to read Alexandra Kolesnikova’s verbatim play dedicated to the fate of one of the impersonators. The protagonist/interviewee tries to reason the existence of this phenomenon: “А вот двойника Сталина сейчас нигде нет, удивительно просто! А он столько правил страной, и двойника его нет. Кроме как в кино. Просто Ленин, у него другое свойство.”106 “Professia: Lenin” (“Profession: Lenin”) was written in 2005. Though it is based almost word for word on an interview with a real, living person (a stylistic characteristic of verbatim), it is not a naïve account, but a breakdown of the look-alike performance; it is a perspective onto the 90s from the 2000s with its changed cultural aesthetic. Throughout the entire play, the character muses on the nature of those properties that make Lenin’s image survive through the 90s and roam the streets of the 2000s. The playwright tries to answer the same question, yet differently; not changing the lines, she frames the narrative in such a way as to expose her own authorial meta-narrative: the transformation of man into myth. It is not by accident that she subtitles the play “verbatim-farce”. To begin with, the list of characters announces Lenin's double Koklenkov, the interviewer Alexander and the random visitors of the cafe, where the dialogue takes place. This self-replacement by a male alter ego already hints at a reversal of roles and expectations. Indeed, the random visitors often take on the roles of people in Koklenkov's life, stealing a line or two, as he tells his tale (which may be read as a metaphor of his own life being snitched through his performance of Lenin). As already stated above, Lenin’s “Double” makes money by posing for cameras                                                                                                                 106  Alexandra  Kolesnikova,  “Professia:  Lenin”  in  Prem’era  2006-­‐2007:  a  Collection  of  Plays  (Moscow:   Moscow  Culture  Department,  2008),  24.     78   together with the customer. This togetherness serves as alleged evidence, which delivers the customers into a state of intimate proximity with history: they are captured in eternity with a legendary symbol of their country’s past – the emblematic past, in which the real is already inseparable from the mythical. The presence of a third person – the photographer – does not allow the moment to completely sink into the realm of historical fantasy, keeping it within a frame of commercial relations. This is not merely a fixation on visual imagery, which, as we have seen, has always played an important role in Lenin's representation, but a reinvented obsession with liveness. This nuance is emphasized in the play, as a cafe visitor who impersonates a passer-by from Koklenkov's account says: “Ой, да зачем нам к мавзолею надо, он там мертвый лежит, а тут живой! Да давай с ним сфотографируемся.”107 (“Oh, but why should we go to the mausoleum, he lies dead there, and here we have him alive! Let’s take a picture with him.”) The encounter (and the commemoration of the moment) with the fake “living” Lenin is valued more than the encounter with the “real”, dead one. What is, in fact, for sale here is an experience of ‘real life’; a certain immediacy and spontaneity of interaction. This brings us back to the October festivals with their immediacy and liveness. The circle has been completely closed: from the complete loss of the original spontaneity in the folds of the myth's multitude of layers and to its reacquisition through a reinvention of meaning. The interaction between the double, the customer and the photographer is of a ritualistic nature; the ritual, which had always been inherent to the Lenin myth, returns with a vengeance. However, this time, instead of the Lenin corners or the compulsory mourning meetings, it is posing for a photograph with a                                                                                                                 107  Kolesnikova,  “Profession:  Lenin”,  31.     79   man who is dressed and made up like Lenin. The monetary exchange stands for a verbal exchange – as a sign of appreciation – thus also manifesting a ritualistic shade. Unfortunately, the overt appeal to the «make-believe» nature of the situation makes it a mock ritual, just as the sense of life it conveys is a mediated, pre-arranged, and thus, artificial, life. However, for the double himself there is nothing even remotely mocking or even humorous in his role-playing. In contrast, he is indignant at the cheap representation of Lenin impersonation shown on a television program made by Russian pop star celebrities: ДВОЙНИК: Тут первые разочарования: я думал, что ага, на серьезном уровне ожидания были, что это политическое, серьезное, Ну, Ленин! Вдруг выясняется, что нас учат краковяк танцевать. А: То есть развлекуха. […] ДВОЙНИК: Но думаю, даже в этой роли я не уроню Ленина. По воспитанию я это… отец у меня коммунист такой. 108 THE DOUBLE: My first disapppointment: I thought that, like, I had serious expectations, that this is something political and serious. I mean, it's Lenin! And suddenly I find out that they teach us how to dance krakoviak. A: Entertainment. […] THE DOUBLE: But I think that I will not make Lenin look bad even in this role. I mean, my upbringing is like… My father is such a Communist. The Double protests at the attempts to reduce Lenin impersonation to the level of pop- culture. He treats his role with deep veneration and gives his mission a meaning of historical importance: “Двести долларов, это уже Ленин, это уже он зарабатывает, не я, это интересно сразу. И вот с тех пор я понял, что моя роль в общем-то не очень- то сложная - просто сообщать, сколько я имею, и все будут знать насколько Ленин                                                                                                                 108  Kolesnikova,  “Profession:  Lenin”,  19.       80   жив.”109 (“Two hundred dollars, this is not me, ut Lenin who makes this money, this is interesting. And since then I’ve realized that my role is not that difficult – simply to let people know how much money I make, and everybody will know that Lenin is alive.”) Interestingly, Koklenkov does not care about whether the customers approach him in all earnesty, or whether they mock him; Kolesnikova reaffirms the attitude of the prototype: “what matters is that they remember Lenin, the mere fact of recognition means that the entire country remembers Lenin.”110 At first sight, it would seem that Koklenkov has joined the long line of traders who have used Lenin’s image as a commodity, that he is another appropriator. However, the contrary is in fact the case, as Koklenkov, does not simply abuse his resemblance to Lenin to make a profit; financial success is not his end goal, but a tool that is supposed to reflect Lenin’s presence in people’s hearts, a “thermometer” to measure the degree of affection in which he is held: “То есть, я должен показывать градус любви людей к Ленину, не ко мне, а к Ленину, именно сообщая, сколько я имею на этом деле.”111 (“I mean, I need to show the degree of people’s love to Lenin, not to me, but to Lenin, by announcing how much money I make out of it.”) The money paid for a “photo with Lenin” is a material proof of the remains of his spiritual legacy, of the unabated interest towards the Leader. It seems that this particular person sees all material sides of impersonation as symbolic of a spiritual essence. Thus, he finds his resemblance not at all accidental. Remembering her interview sessions with the Double's prototype, Kolesnikova remarks:                                                                                                                 109  Kolesniova,  “Profession:  Lenin”,  25.   110  Alexandra  Kolesnikova,  Interview,  November  24,  2011.   111  Kolesnikova,  “Profession:  Lenin”,  23.     81   “He told me that it is no coincidence that he looks so much like Lenin – he must be his reincarnation. He believes that he is on a certain mission.”112 Of course, he takes pride in his authentically reddish hair and bald spot, in the fact that he resembles Lenin more than the other look-alikes, yet he seeks a complete fusion, which includes a fusion of mind and heart. He confesses: “Меня больше привлекала в личности Ленина не внешняя его сторона - как он дергается, как он там бегает, - меня больше волновали его мысли.”113 (“I've been most attracted not the exterior of Lenin's persona – how he twitches or runs – I was deeply moved by his thoughts. ”) Koklenkov reads and rereads the complete works of Lenin, so that his inner world matches his looks. Eventually, he began to identify so much with his part that he divorced his wife for not sharing his communist views. Thus, the double’s appearance began to influence his thoughts, which — in turn — influence his actions. This movement from the exterior to the interior and back to the exterior suggests that Koklenkov’s identity is going through the same mythological journey as the Lenin myth itself, with its undulation from the iconic to the ritualistic and back. The case of Koklenkov is one of supreme amalgamation: not only does he follow the myth, but he also lives through its very structure and pattern. Indeed, the negotiation of identity is one of the most dominant themes in the play. Even though the list of characters presents us with the double's name (Koklenkov), he appears further only as the Double (Dvoinik), as if to assert that his identity is assumed through another, that his own authentic identity is missing. The protagonist, however, sees this as a fortuitous opportunity to change his life. Kolesnikova recalls: “He told me that at 40 he suddenly realized that he looks like Lenin, and it was so natural for him, that                                                                                                                 112  Kolesnikova,  Interview.     113  Kolesnikova,  “Profession:  Lenin”,  20.     82   he immediately inhabited this part. This idea really grew on him: that he can influence people's conscience, that if he becomes Lenin, it will be more than just being himself.”114 This coexistence of two personalities within one body seems rather challenging: the self- proclaimed messiah is still forced to engage in such mundane things as grocery shopping and paying the bills. Yet in Koklenkov’s case this dualization does not lead to an inner conflict: “Почему-то говорят, что перевоплощение в другую личность должно связано быть с отказом от своей. Но я очень органично, очень органично, это как бы продолжение меня.”115 (“For some reason they say that a reincarnation into a different persona should involve a renunciation of your own identity. But for me all of this is natural, so natural, this is like a continuation of my own self.”) The compromise of identity is best shown in his home nickname – “Lenik” – used by all family members, including his granddaughter. This warm and playful diminutive reflects the recognition of Koklenkov as a domestic, tame and endearing incarnation of Lenin, a Lenin fit well enough for coexistence. That kind of doubling, which peacefully and harmoniously appropriates the person’s entity, transforms into “othering”: not just becoming the other, but being the other, metamorphosing without damaging the self, since the self is also inherently changed. This notion is reflected in the lives of other doubles who surround Koklenkov. The play, based on Kolesnikova's sociological research, refers us to a rich subculture of doubles. Some Hitlers (like Koklenkov's best friend), some more Lenins, some Brezhnevs, even some doubles of pop figures. They have no friends amongst ordinary people, they mingle with each other: celebrate together, drink together and compete for                                                                                                                 114  Kolesnikova,  Interview.   115  Kolesnikova,  “Profession:  Lenin”,  Page  21.     83   places to ply their trade. At times they organize competitions, where many doubles compete for the title of the most ‘authentic’ look-alike. The winner, thus, is one whose own identity is most effaced; the lack of self is perceived as a virtue. Such doubling is more than a career, more even than a “mission” (though it is so for Koklenkov): it becomes a way of life. This time it is the signifier that performs the appropriation, assuming the entire life and identity of a flesh-and-blood human being. This 2000s play from the 2000s is, in fact, about Russia in the 1990s, those notorious 90s, which, after taking everything away —identities included — offered unique opportunities: “vacant” identities to inhabit. Those many unfortunates who lost everything– homes, jobs, their home country (which overnight became mythological) and their self-respect found a new calling, a life credo in assuming another's identity. Though the identity crisis of the 90s has often been described in contemporary Russian literature and theater, «Profession: Lenin» is the only work that directly relates to the mythological crisis. The system containing the old myths, which was already destitute, but still held together, had collapsed, and those empty mythical shells, having been released from the restraining frame, began wandering freely, inviting and welcoming any who desired to inhabit them. The impersonation of the figure of “Lenin” as an assumption of a fictional identity might stand as a metaphor for the 90s generation. This time, however, the appropriation was a two-way process: the fictional identity was no longer appropriated as a signifier, but for its “self”, as an integral sign. Nevertheless, since the sign had long been reduced to a signifier, it swallowed the appropriator reducing him — in his turn — to a signifier as well. In this way, Koklenkov turned into a signifier for Lenin: a signifier for a signifier.   84   The performance of the play under the direction of Olga Lysak reiterated this thought, becoming a game of “Lenin identity tag”, playfully distributed amongst the other characters in the play. People mentioned by Koklenkov in his account seem to appear straight from his memory, turning from the cafe's regulars into the desired characters. Some of them take on the narration, telling his story instead of him, sometimes using the third person, yet often lapsing into the first person as if — in their turn — they are trying his identity for themselves. This can be read as a comment on the flexibility of Koklenkov's identity: since his authentic persona is completely effaced, he acquires a mythical status, which means that anyone can represent him, just as he chooses to represent a mythical icon. However, this appropriation of the character's lines has another sub-textual meaning: it is, in fact, Koklenkov's dream come true, insofar as he “infects” everyone with whom he comes into contact with “Lenin essence”, fulfilling his life's goal of transfer perpetuating Lenin's image. This is further reflected when everyone onstage sings the famous pioneer song on the Revolution: “I Lenin takoi molodoi”, and for that very instant the interviewer Alexander in his red vest transforms into a young pioneer. However, since “Lenin” in this context overtly stands for a collection of clichés and platitudes, Koklenkov's mission is accomplished only ironically; the pervasion of Lenin's identity is possible not thanks to the renewed awe at the Leader's thoughts and ambitions, but due to the loose, unstable and penetrable identities of everyone involved. This situation as it is written and played out is a keen reflection on the identity-myth interaction in the post-mythological space; when myths are definite, however worn out, identity is usually defined in relation to the myth whether according to it or against it, yet   85   upon the destruction of this frame, once the myth is dispelled and disconnected from reality, points of reference are gone, and identity helplessly flutters in an empty space, orphaned of myths. Moreover, the staging of the play adds another dimension to the negotiation of identity, placing it in relation to the identity of the performer. The actor’s living body is, in general, a complex sign, theatrically functioning as a ‘double’; as Marvin Carlson notes – “existing simultaneously as present material objects and as signifiers of absent signifieds, so that an audience is aware both of an actor and the character the actor is portraying.”116 However, the actor who embodies the role of the protagonist neither resembles Lenin, nor is made up to look like him. Arbitrarily accepting this discrepancy, the audience is forced to associate the actor with Lenin, at least for the duration of the performance. Within this newly suggested reality, even the notion of physical resemblance is deceptive and misleading and any points of reference to the original myth are lost. Once the mythological frame is disturbed, any of the components can be rearranged. If the move beyond text toward corporeality — as the most distinctive feature of performance art — typically struggles to blur the boundaries between art and reality, bringing theater back to ritual, in this case, the staging only emphasizes the theatrical and illusionary quality of the seemingly documentary text. While a performer is usually “acting in between identities”117, making performance the paradigm of liminality, the actor impersonating Koklenkov is performing doubly: he plays a role of a person playing                                                                                                                 116  Marvin  Carlson,  Speaking  in  Tongues:  Languages  at  Play  in  the  Theatre  (Ann  Arbor:  University  of   Michigan  Press,  2006),  95.       117  Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 129.     86   a role. When in the end, the real prototype or interviewee (a true spitting image of Lenin) participates in the curtain call with the actors, beaming and smiling, two performances are occurring simultaneously: the first of the actor who is still inside his role, and the second of Koklenkov who is always performing himself in his borrowed identity. The prototype’s performance is no less fictional than that of the actor who had been saying his lines from the stage; in a sense, the latter is more conscious of his performance, not hiding behind an artificially constructed appearance, while the former performs naively, unaware of his true behavioral definition. Consequently, we deal with a performance conscious of its status and an earnest, oblivious performance, as Koklenkov never steps out of his role. The liminality of staging “Profession: Lenin” is not only in the duplication and multiplication of identities; it is a liminality between fiction and nonfiction, with ambiguity inherent in the status of each. This doubling of doubles, and the game of recognition that it creates, is a touchstone for each audience member to check his or her level of personal associations, of vulnerability or opaqueness to lost, wandering myths. There is, however, a physicalized element of the Lenin myth, which remains not only well grounded, but immobile. This is, of course, his embalmed body. Let us return to the scene in “Profession: Lenin” in which a passerby chooses to take a photo with the Double rather than reaching his original destination: Lenin’s body in the mausoleum. Koklenkov’s performance (which often takes place in Red Square) is, thus, inconstant awareness of the body’s proximity. This enforced juxtaposition, and the resultant tension between the Double and the corpse, makes Koklenkov’s performance site-specific, and, as always in site-specific performances, the place is “read”; in the words of Michel de   87   Certeau, “Space is a practiced place… […] An act of reading is the space produced by the practice of a particular place: a written text, i.e., a place constituted by a system of signs.”118 The past associations reveal and revivify years and decades of a particular ritual that used to take place at that space, together with with all of the gradual changes that it has undergone. The awareness of the historicity of the place brings to mind the long lines of people coming to bid last farewell to the Leader, others —too young to remember Him and becoming younger still— coming to admire the dead/living legend, and yet “others” visiting out of habit or idle curiosity. Meaning is inevitably bestowed on a location by its continuous use; however, this meaning fits itself to the ever varying, changing nature of the ritual. The mausoleum as a space has accumulated invisible layers of history —just like the earth or a tree trunk; it has been first a shrine, a place of worship, then an official dusty cornerstone of the Soviet system, a destination of many bored schoolchildren on a forced field trip, and, finally, a tourist attraction, an appendix of the dethroned past, a former relic, desecrated by irony. When such a place becomesthe locus of performance, it is “read”, and all its past associations and meanings are worked upon and transformed.119 It seems that the time has arrived to part with the defamed artifact and, in fact, a majority of Russians are ready for the change. According to a VCIOM survey from 02.02.2011, 61% of Russians believe that it is time to move Lenin away from Red Square into a cemetery, and 43% suggest that it should be done without delay (compared to 38% in 2005-2008). Yet, this is not being done: something holds them back. Todorov, writing                                                                                                                 118  Michel  De  Certeau  The  Practice  of  Everyday  Life  (Berkeley:  University  of  California  Press,  1984),   117.   119  Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks, Theatre/Archaeology (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), 110.   88   on the topic in the mid-90s, has a rather poetically sinister outlook on the possible reasons for such hesitation: The corpse unfolds the physiognomic spaces of communism. It induces universal melancholy and organizes people’s mass grief. The Corpse is the engine of people’s paranoia. The mummy is the incarnate of the roaming communist specter, which advertises its own imaginary space. If the teaching of the leader is the rational motive of communism, his Corpse is the carnal one. Thus communism merges the rational and the carnal in a political mode of life. The mummy suggests a politicized melancholy.120 According to Todorov’s vision, the material (the mummy) again serves as a metaphor: the Lenin corpse perpetually authorizes his ideas, and, while it is present, there is always a hope of a comeback, of a return. He continues: “The mausoleum is a marvelous catapult constructed to launch Lenin back into the living world…Like a butterfly, Lenin will take off some day from his own mummy.”121 Yet, what is most interesting is the definition of the corpse as the carnal counterpart of the “roaming communist specter”: it appears that the “loose, roaming myth” orphaned from the system that birthed it, is not completely loose and not completely orphaned as long as the mausoleum stands erect. The mummy is the myth’s safeguard, its matrix, the only string that still attaches it to a certain reality, to a known and defined shape, so that the myth does not become so loose and formless, that it is no longer recognizable. It is precisely the mummy’s inner mythical durability (to the changing myth of Lenin) that makes it transgress time and history: “The mummy stands beyond the principle of real and fictitious, beyond the code that splits them. […] The mummy is the maximum of presence, totally excluded absence. The mummy is the                                                                                                                 120  Vladislav  Todorov,  Red  Square,  Black  Square:  Organon  for  Revolutionary  Imagination  (New  York:   State  University  of  New  York  Press,  1995,  5).   121  Todorov,  Red  Square,  Black  Square,  134.     89   real.”122 If the mummy is the real Lenin, why then does passerby choose the double? The answer is simple: it is precisely the presence of the double that alters the status of the corpse. Just as the performer (the double) is affected by the site where he performs (Red Square, with the mausoleum nearby), so is the site affected and recontextualized by the performer. If the doubling of Koklenkov is read as “othering”, then the corpse, radically familiarized, is the ultimate “other”. The performance of Koklenkov, taking shape in the same physical space, is not an othering in itself, yet it inevitably echoes the “real”, original othering, of the stiff, timeless, time-winning othering of the mummy. The money made by Koklenkov as an evidence of Lenin being alive is an extended commentary on the money made for decades by the mummy, a part of a larger economy of existence of the myth. Yet if the mummy is in a perpetual liminal state between life and death, the double embarks upon a move in an affirmative cycle of life: whilst supporting the Lenin myth, he is equally supported by it in a wondrous symbiosis. This is precisely why the interaction of the “Lenin photo” exchange for money cannot offer real liveness or an original ritual, but only an echo, a repetition, in the end, a mockery. “The real” is vulnerable to mockery, to repetition: it cannot, after all, seize the myth and prevent it from corrupt cycles of self-copying. In his silent, covert combat with the mummy, Koklenkov is the winner – by his complete metamorphosis he reaches the same “realness” and eternity as the mummy, while not having had to die first. (At the curtain call of the premiere, Koklenkov breaks down crying, saying that Kolesnikova, the playwright, had given him immortality; yet the                                                                                                                 122  Todorov,  Red  Square,  Black  Square,  140.     90   play only grasps what is already there.) Kolesnikova confesses that she sees her play as continuing the «little man» theme in Russian literature: “it is about a man who tried on this huge overcoat and believed in his self-importance.”123 Amazingly, the Double manages to keep his 'overcoat' and make it even bigger. And still, the Double's existence within his 'eternity' is accentuated and set off by the mummy: he needs the mummy as an intermediary between himself and Lenin, as a process of time transgression already long set in motion, as an exemplary myth for the little man to follow. All of the components continuously evoke each other in this complex mythological system, and they all meet at the curtain call of “Profession: Lenin”: the actor playing the Double, the Double himself, and the ever-present mummy in the mausoleum. Those counterparts of the Lenin holy trinity repeat and echo each other, coexisting in a simultaneous mode of reflection and impersonation, a circle that can never be broken until one of its components is gone. It is neither the play, nor the performance, but the performatively liminal moment of the curtain call, which clearly demonstrates the possibility of mythical existence outside its frame, the life after death, the possibility of afterlife for orphaned myths.                                                                                                                 123  Kolesnikova,  Interview.     91   THE SPLIT PERSONALITY OF THE STALIN MYTH The mythological network that surrounded the cult of Stalin at its height was as heterogeneous as that of the Lenin myth, only not so much with regard to the ritualistic aspect, but the richness and complexity. The best way of discerning the main elements and key compounds of the myth is through cataloguing the imagery of the profuse Staliniana poetry. A collection published in 1949 and named Stikhi o Vozhde exhibits quite a varied selection of verse and includes the most famous and substantial samples. The notable absence of naming is present already in the title of the collection: it is Poems of the Leader, not Poems of Stalin. The poems themselves also refrain from abusing the Leader’s name, in contrast to the overt naming of Lenin in Leniniana poetry. The poets make recourse to the name, only when it stands for something other than itself, when it implicitly represents a larger construct, as in the lines by Demian Bednyi: “Ленин- Cталин! В этом слове / Нам священен каждый слог. / В двуедином этом слове / Счастья родины залог.”124 (“Lenin-Stalin! Every syllable in this word is sacred to us. This two-part word is the promise of motherland’s happiness.”) On other occasions, the name is used sparingly (which only serves to its greater effect when it does appear). Paperny explains this reluctance to appeal to the name of the adored cult figure in relation to his definition of Stalinist times as “culture 2”: “Культура 2 к имени чрезвычайно почтительна. Имя для нее почти по-библейски свято и страшно. Оно с точки зрения                                                                                                                 124  Stikhi  o  Vozhde.  (Moscow:  Pravda,  2004),  4.     92   культуры даже обладает чудодейственной силой.”125 (“Culture 2 is extremely respectful of names. It perceives a name to be sacred and frightful almost in a biblical sense. From the Culture's perspective it even possesses a miraculous power.”) Thus, the name of Stalin is too potent, too powerful – it is not to be used in vain (which is reminiscent to the prohibition of using God’s name in vain in the Judeo-Christian tradition). it is, in essence, the name of God, not to be used in vain. Just like the name of God, the name of Stalin has many substitutions and replacements, which are fixed and formulaic amplifications of the name. This helps to clarify the nature of “Stalin’s” symbolic standing, though it is not monolithic, but comprised of several (sometimes conflicting) aspects. Certain forms of address resemble 18th century odes to Catherine the Great: “Тебе краса всех городов земных, тебе, мудрец, мудрейший из живых!”126 (“The beauty of all wordly towns is for you, o wisest elder, the wisest of all living.”); other poems use the charged epithet “the great”.127 (It is Abram Tertz who was the first to mark the link between Socialist Realism and 18th century poetry.) Yet the most abundant titles are more democratic, even though still accentuating Stalin’s higher status. Thus, he is most often called Leader, Teacher and Father – all of these titles contributing to the general image of the wise elder. At the same time, the characteristics of a wise elder go hand in hand with the allusions to his divinity. He is not only the “godlike figure to be worshipped and obeyed”128, but the Savior, the one who fights and provides not only for Russia, but for humanity in its entirety. Yet, as opposed to Lenin’s direct parallels to Jesus, Stalin’s                                                                                                                 125  Vladimir  Paperny,  Kultura  2.  (Moscow:  Novoe  Literaturnoe  Obozrenie,  2006),  181.     126  Stikhi  o  Vozhde,  3.   127  Ibid,  2.   128  Richard  Stites,  Russian  Popular  Culture:  Entertainment  and  Society  Since  1900  (Cambridge:   Cambridge  University  Press,  1992),  66.     93   supernatural powers seem to possess a pagan nature. The abundant usage of Stalin’s name as a metaphor for the sun is not accidental: “[…] Чтоб за дальними полями / Увидать лучи Кремля. / Ждет страна, от ясных далей / Не отводит зорких глаз. В наши хаты входит Cталин, / одаряя правдой нас.” (Emelian Bukov)129 (“[…]So that Kremlin’s rays would be seen beyond distant fields. The country awaits, not turning its sharp-sighted eyes away from bright distances. Stalin enters our homes, illuminating us with truth.”) ; so are the less sophisticated similes: “Со Сталиным вольно живется на свете, / Как ясное солнце, он греет и светит.” (“Life with Stalin is so free-spirited, he shines and gives warmth just like the bright sun.”) (Yanka Kupala).130 The solar imagery brings us back directly to Kievan Rus’ — the times when the emerging Orthodox Christianity was still conflated with paganism in the minds of the Russian people — and to its leader Prince Vladimir, nicknamed Vladimir Krasnoe Solnyshko (Red (Fair) Dear Sun Vladimir), not only a historical figure, but the hero of many folk poems and byliny. Thus, Stalin is not just a superhero; he is essentially a character – a hero of the literary past, of the mysterious, otherworldly present. It is important to note that the magical powers attributed to Stalin by the Soviet people are so strong that even the select works of his foes present him as a titan, a true bogatyr', such as in Osip Mandel'shtam's “My zhiviom pod soboju ne chuya strany” (“We live not feeling the country beneath ourselves”): in the sentence “его толстые пальца как черви жирны […] тараканьи смеются усища” (“his fat fingers are fleshy like worms […] his cockroach huge mustache is laughing”) both hyperbole and the intensifying suffix attest to the presence of an (evil) supernatural creature, not a plain mortal.                                                                                                                 129  Stikhi  o  Vozhde,  5.     130  Ibid,  30.     94   In the 40s, under the shade of World War II, the pompous language gives way to a more simple, mundane one; Stalin is familiarized. He is now less of a mysterious, unreachable superhero, more a member of the narod – a comrade, a friend who will not desert the people in times of trouble. This feeling is expressed in the famous poem (later turned into a song) by Mikhail Isaakovskii: “Спасибо Вам, что в годы испытаний / Вы помогли нам устоять в борьбе, / Мы так Вам верили, товарищ Сталин, / Как, может быть, не верили себе.”131 (“Thank you for helping us to survive the struggle in the years or trials, we believed you so, Comrade Stalin, we believed you, perhaps, more than we believed ourselves.”) Similar attempts to make Stalin a more approachable, humane figure are present in less known poems as well: “Говорят, товарищ Сталин / В эти дни на фронте был, / Говорят, товарищ Сталин / У майора прикурил.”132 (“They say that Comrade Stalin was at the front in those days, they say that Comrade Stalin shared a smoke with the Major.”) “Он с трубкою своей резной, / в костюмчике военном, / таким душевным был со мной, / сердечным, откровенным.”133 (“With his carved pipe, in his army suit, he was so warm with me, so sincere and heart-felt.”) This renewed accessible Stalin is featured not merely as the «father of nations», but as a father, a close relative of every single Soviet person. His portrait is placed amongst the photographs of loved ones, and in the following case, Stepan Shchipachiov's poem reflects reality quite accurately: “Поглядел, рукой багет потрогал:/ - Эту карточку повыше бы немного, / Катерина Тихоновна, надо, / Или пусть отдельно на столе стоит… - / На него она                                                                                                                 131  Stikhi  o  Vozhde,  25.   132  Ibid,  26.   133  Ibid,  46.       95   блеснула взглядом: / Тут, милок, все – близкие мои…”134 (“He looked around and said: - you should put that photo a bit up, Katerina Tikhonovna, or it should stand alone on the table, apart from the others… She glanced at him: here is where the photos of all near ones stand, honey-pie…”) With the war, the feelings of unspeakable awe, which implied Stalin’s superiority and the impossibility of approaching him, are exchanged by a strong, even aggressive emotion of closeness. The portrait being not “above” and not “separate” signifies the intimate relationship the Soviet citizen has with Stalin; it can be said not only that Stalin possesses the souls of his countrymen, but each and every one of them has claims to possessing him. The penetration of Stalin’s portrait into the private sphere of every family is described in yet another poem, this time by V. Lebedev-Kumach: Товарищ! Пройдем по земле советской - / Заглянем в квартиры, в завком, в сельсовет, / В школу, в кино, в санаторий детский, / Всюду мы встретим знакомый портрет. / В дальних зимовках, покрытых снегами, / В светлых дворцах академий наук - / Всюду он зримо присутствует с нами, / Вождь и учитель, товарищ и друг. / В доме колхозном с почетного места / Милые сердцу портреты глядят: / Сын-пулеметчик, дочурка-невеста, А посредине – портрет вождя.135 Comrade! Let's walk around Soviet land - Let's peep into apartments, into offices, schools, cinema, a children's sanatorium. We will meet the familiar portrait everywhere: in distant camping places, covered by snows, in bright palaces of science academies. He is with us everywhere visibly, our Leader and teacher, our comrade and friend. The dear portraits look at us from a place of honor in a kolkhoz house: a machine gunner son, a bride-daughter, and the portrait of the Leader is right in the middle. Here, the nuance is slightly shifted: yes, Stalin's portrait is amongst photographs of family members, yes, he is a comrade and a friend, but first and foremost he is a father and a teacher. Stalin's omniscient presence in every household, in every state building, is                                                                                                                 134  Stikhi  o  Vozhde,  82.   135  Ibid,  32.     96   a symbol of a higher order, a surveillance of sorts – a reminder of the ever-watching eye. Importantly, the authors of the collections of poetry are of many nationalities — Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Turkmen — there is a poetic representative of nearly every Soviet republic in order to demonstrate the total, all-encompassing character of love and devotion to Stalin. The cover picture, however, is not Stalin’s portrait (the subject of nearly as many poems as Stalin himself), as if the image, just like the name, is too holy to be used in vain. Instead, the cover features a drawing of the Kremlin covered with red flags. If Lenin signified the party, Stalin signified the Kremlin (and vice versa); merged with the Kremlin, the heart of Moscow, he is one with the nation. The absolute unification of Stalin with the Russian people is implied in the poem of Gafir Guliam: “Мы дышим на свете со Сталиным вместе, / И мир весь объемлет дыханье одно.”136 (“We breathe in this world together with Stalin, and the entire world is enclosed in one breath.”) Sinyavsky uses this phenomenon to explain the immense grief of the people at Stalin's death: “It’s just that Stalin had become a synonym for the entire State, for life on earth.”137 Thus, the myth establishes itself as an integral part of self-identity, inseparable from the consciousness of the average citizen, and turns into a grand mega myth. The period’s dramatic works concerning Stalin employ the same mythological terminology as the Staliniana poetry, reproducing both the heroic and familiar aspects of the iconic image. (For instance, Shalva Dadiani’s “Iz Iskry” - a typical example of the portrayal of the “man of steel”.) The only notable attempt to break through the rigid boundaries of the fixed myth was Mikhail Bulgakov’s play “Batum”, a fact that explains its comparatively recent publication in the late 1980s, and its complete obscurity before                                                                                                                 136  Stikhi  o  Vozhde,  12.   137  Andrei  Sinyavskii,  Soviet  Civilization  (New  York:  Arcade  Publishing,  1988),  104.     97   then. Commissioned in 1939 by the MHT (for Stalin’s 60th birthday), the play was Bulgakov’s only opportunity to become a published and staged author again. Yet, staying true to himself, Bulgakov did not wish to join the line of court playwrights who had learned the mythological adornments by heart. He was determined to conduct serious research and base his work on facts. Already in 1931 he wrote: “В отношении к генсекретарю возможно только одно — правда, и серьезная.”138 (“Everything that regards the General Secretary allows only one thing – a serious truth.”) However, since Bulgakov was denied access to the archives, he had no choice other than to make do with well-known facts, being unable to utilize historical, archival material, or give green light to his fantasy. In a 1990 article on the recently published work, the critic Miron Petrovskii judged it a servile, artistically weak play.139 Naturally, the trapped writer could not produce a convincing strong work, let alone a demystifying one. However, as to “servile” one can disagree: Bulgakov’s operations with the myth are far more ambivalent than they appear at first glance. Taking place in1901-1904, it tells of Stalin’s younger years and the beginning of his political struggles. Stalin is shown as an ardent, strong young man, already completely conscious of his life’s goal at the age of 19. The organizer of the workers’ revolution in Batum is a true “man of steel”, amazingly upfront and honest, not even bothering to disguise his revolutionary credentials. Whilst in prison he stays completely the same (the play completely lacks any character development): he retains his will, spirit and acute sense of justice, which later results in his rebellion against the cruelty of the prison system. Stalin’s language in the play is gauged and flat, resembling the speech of                                                                                                                 138  Miron  Petrovskii,  “Delo  o  Batume,”  Teatr  2  (1990):  34.     139  Ibid.       98   an automaton. Nevertheless he still clearly appears as the Savior: not the meek and mild Christ who turns the left cheek, but the avenging Christ who takes action and fights for his people, though in the end he willingly offers himself as a scape goat, sacrificing himself for the sake of their betterment. Yet, one cannot help feeling that this is an honest work (despite Bulgakov’s insane caution in the portrayal of Stalin and his own limited options in constructing the play) this is not a preconceived compromise or faint- heartedness, but a sincere attempt to find in his character something to his liking. What Bulgakov emphasizes in “Batum” is Stalin’s nonconformism – Bulgakov’s favorite quality, an essential trait of many of his beloved protagonists (like Moliere, for instance). Bulgakov’s Stalin is a profoundly different portrayal than the standard “father of nations” or the “superhero”: this is the iconoclast Stalin, the individualist Stalin, the freedom-loving Stalin who stands alone against a repressive system, not even suspecting that one day he will create one even worse. It is no accident that Bulgakov’s play never passed the censors: Stalin never allowed discussion of his prerevolutionary past; for him, as for any deity, the point of origin was the dawn of his rule. Daring to “put” a different image on Stalin, Bulgakov had attempted to add the “Koba nuance” to the Stalin myth, to open up the door of the past – in short, he tried to do the unthinkable. The Stalin myth never admitted a past: unlike Lenin, whose past — the events of October and the Revolution — glorified him, Stalin insisted on being timeless: not just pervasively omnipresent, but endless, eliminating the past and future planes, subjecting them all to the present, allowing his presence to seem eternal and unchallenged even by time. The   99   myth of “Stalin” was, in fact, the first work of the socialist realist project, well defined by the slogan “the Purpose is present”.140 Another reason for the failure of Bulgakov’s play lies in the impossibility of approaching Stalin’s biography, even through an artistic treatment, the cause of which was to be found not only in Stalin’s reluctance to admit anyone too close to the subject, but in the established mythological aesthetics. On one hand, Stalin — as the higher, all- absorbing symbol — generously lets all other discussed and mentioned historical characters borrow his biography. As Evgenii Dobrenko remarks, “в любом историческом персонаже, ставшем предметом биографического интереса при Сталине, непременно присутствует Сталин.”141 (“Every historical character, which became an object of a biographical interest under Stalin, Stalin is indispensably present.”) In contrary to Lenin, who became a signifier for other personas (first and foremost for Stalin), Stalin becomes the suggested, alluded signified. In such a fashion, Stalin wrote the biography of Lenin, ciphering and coding his own biography within the frame of the facts of Lenin's life, endowing Lenin with his own character traits, using his own motives and reasoning to explain Lenin's acts. Alexander Genis writes: “In the language of communism there was only one signified, which had a myriad of signifiers”142, meaning the end goal of Utopian Communism; but, during Stalin’s “reign”, it is the myth of Stalin which became synonymous with the end goal of the Communist state as well as with its unquestioned, eternal present. “Stalin” became the eternal, inevitable signified.                                                                                                                 140  Tertz,  Abram,  “What  is  Socialist  Realism”  in  The  Trial  Begins/On  Sociaist  Realism  (Berkeley  &  Los   Angeles:  University  of  California  Press,  1982),  167.   141  Evgenii  Dobrenko,  Muzei  Revoliutsii:  Sovetskoe  Kino  i  Stalinskii  Istoricheskii  Narrativ  (Moscow:   NLO,  2008),  120.  Henceforth  cited  as  Dobrenko,  Muzei  Revoliutsii,  followed  by  page  number.     142  Alexander  Genis,  “Onions  and  Cabbages:  Paradigms  of  Contemporary  Culture”  in  Russian  Post-­‐ Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on  Post-­‐Soviet  Culture  ed.  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover  (New  York  &   Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),  396.     100   As for Stalin’s own biography, all attempts at reconstruction were suffocated at its grassroots. The difficulty of following the official story, adjusting the constantly changing facts, had been only one of the problematic aspects. A story from Stalin’s domestic life told by Dobrenko helps to understand the root of the problem: scolding his son Vasilii in the late 40s, Stalin tells him: “Ты думаешь, что ты Сталин? Может, ты думаешь, что я – Сталин? Вот Сталин,” сказал он ему, указав на свой парадный портрет, украшавший кабинет вождя.”143 (“You think you’re Stalin? Maybe you think that I’m Stalin? Here’s Stalin – and he pointed at his dress portrait, which adorned the Leader’s cabinet.”) Whether this is an actual historical account or —which is more likely— an anecdote, a part of the self-reflecting myth, it accurately illustrates the situation. Kharkholdin writes that “Stalin […] was seemingly embarrassed by the cult of his own lichnost’, when it concerned his physical rather than political body”144 Stalin was on a wakeful watch of his own myth, taking care to match his physical body to the political one, to conceal any discrepancy. This also explains the Leader’s known hobby – watching documentaries and films about himself: in order to correspond to his own myth, Stalin had to learn it thoroughly. The popular opinion that Stalinist myths were born under his unabated control is not entirely correct. As soon as a myth receives a life of its own, it slips away, no longer obeying its originator. The only thing the mythological subject (outgrown by the myth) may attempt to control is the degree to which he matches his own myth.                                                                                                                 143  Dobrenko,  Muzei  Revoliutsii,  278.   144  Oleg  Kharkhordin,  The  Collective  and  the  Individual  in  Russia:  a  Study  of  Practices  (Berkeley:   University  of  California  Press,  1999),  195.     101   Naturally, Stalin tried to keep his biography out of reach, and could not afford to have biographers. As Dobrenko convincingly claims, the anonymous official biography of Stalin was written by no other man than him (the characteristics of Stalin’s narrative clearly betray him as the author.) However, the inevitable usage of the third person here was not only a necessity to conceal the autobiographical nature of the tract: it was the product of a confused consciousness that separated his actual persona from his own iconic myth. As Dobrenko comments: “Перед нами жанровый тупик: автобиографию Сталин писать не мог, поскольку опять-таки писал биографию того самого Сталина, о котором говорил и думал в третьем лице и на парадный портрет которого указывал сыну.”145 (“We're facing a genre'sdead-end: Stalin couldn't write the autobiography himself, since he would be writing the autobiography of that same Stalin about whom he spoke and thought in third person and whose dress portrait he had shown to his son.”) Yet, this is not only a genre’s dead-end, it is a mythological dead-end: Stalin becomes the chief consumer of his own mythology; in a never-ending circle, he utilizes it to keep reproducing it. Stalin must recognize the dominance and higher importance of the myth: Stalin- the-person becomes the victim of Stalin-the-myth. He must submit to it and comply to its rigid frame in order to support it. Moreover, while the myth is the eternal signified, Stalin-the-person becomes one of the many signifiers Therefore, any attempts to reconstruct the image of the historical persona of Stalin are futile: the only image kept within the folds of history is that of “Stalin’s portrait”. The “portrait”, however, is “unfixed” by definition: every generation and individual artistic interpretation provides                                                                                                                 145  Dobrenko,  Muzei  Revoliutsii,  288.     102   another “portrait”, employing the “eternal signified” as a smokescreen. Thus, the signified acquires a signifying function; the myth fragments simultaneously into a multitude of former signifiers — all alluding to its signified — and into a multitude of new signifiers, which arise from the new condition. Thus, every new attempt at a “portrait session” is both expected and inherently corrupt. The first major “portrait” belongs to the post-Khrushchevian era Khrushchev’s speech at the 20th party congress and his dethronement of Stalin’s cult of personality had a dual affect on the minds of the nation, as best illustrated in the memoirist book of the famous Soviet poet Konstantin Simonov Glazami Cheloveka Moego Pokolenia: Razmyshlenia o I.V. Staline. This long narrative constructed from reminiscences of Stalin, written in 1979 (though published only in 1988) is a remorseful, repentant confession of a person who used to belong to Stalin’s literary “favorites”, openly adored him and glorified him in numerous poems. Orlando Figes, the prominent historian, makes Simonov one of the main personas in his book The Whisperers, claiming that Simonov “embodied all the moral conflicts and dilemmas of his generation.”146 Despite Simonov’s honest attempt to demystify his life’s biggest myth, his account, nevertheless, resorts to the main constructs of the myth. Thus, in describing Stalin’s cruelty and sadism, the vulgarity of his aesthetic principles, his contempt towards talent and towards the human individual, he cannot conceal his admiration of him; here and there he betrays himself by several “slips”. For instance, he calls Stalin a great actor (the familiar epithet!) or praises him for his political talent, especially for several of his strategies during World War II (this while admitting war crimes against the Soviet                                                                                                                 146  Orlando  Figes,  The  Whisperers:  Private  Life  in  Stalin’s  Russia,  (London:  Allen  Lane,  2007),  XXXVIII.     103   people). He insists: “При этом, конечно, нужно все трезво взвешивать и нужно видеть разные стороны деятельности Сталина и не надо изображать его как какого- то ничтожного, мелкого, мелкотравчатого человека. Сталин, конечно, был очень и очень крупным человеком, человеком очень большого масштаба. Это был политик, личность, которую не выбросишь из истории.”147 (“One should, of course, weigh everything soberly, one must see different sides of Stalin’s work, and it woul be wrong to portray him as an insignificant, petty person. Stalin was, of course, a big entity.”) The recognition of Stalin’s greatness (despite his villainy) coexists with demonization, which inevitably contributes to the aggrandizement of his persona. “В одном месте моей книжки один из ее героев — Иван Алексеевич — говорит о Сталине, что это человек великий и страшный. […] Добавлю от себя: не только страшный — очень страшный, безмерно страшный.”148 (”At one place in my novel, one of the protagonists – Ivan Alekseevich – says that Stalin is a great and frightful human being. […] I will add from myself: he's very frightful, endlessly frightful. ”) Thus, Simonov reveals the outcome of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization effort: while accepting the villainy and darkness of the mythological, archetypal persona, no actual reconsideration of the myth itself takes place. The myth retreats to its the polar side, changing the plus sign into a minus, – but neither of its dominant characteristics or components changes. It is the “dethronement”, which is mythical: the myth jumps to its opposite end, to the negative mythology; yet it still remains the mirror image of its old self, true to the same iconic postulates and aesthetics.                                                                                                                 147  Konstantin  Simonov,  Glazami  Cheloveka  Moego  Pokoleniia:  Razmyshlenia  o  I.V.  Staline,  The   Flibusta  Internet  Library  Resource,  accessed  Nov.  20,  2012,  www.flibusta.net.   148  Ibid.       104   Another psychological nuance keenly marked by Simonov is the inability of his generation to completely part with Stalin due to a previous overinvestment in the myth - the fusion of the myth with the individual personality, mentioned above. (For instance, in his landmark text “What is Socialist Realism?” Abram Tertz laments the dethronement of Stalin’s personality cult, claiming that such an icon is necessary to keep everything from falling apart, and names the post-Stalin period a hopeless era of re-evaluation and destruction.”149) While harshly blaming himself for his blind adoration, Simonov nevertheless declares himself to be unashamed of his love poems to Stalin, since, at the time, his feelings were sincere. Moreover, one of his confessions may illustrate the attitude of many people towards the ultimate denunciation of Stalin: Я не был заядлым сталинистом ни в пятьдесят третьем, ни в пятьдесят четвертом году, ни при жизни Сталина. Но в пятьдесят четвертом году, после смерти Сталина, у меня в кабинете дома появилась понравившаяся мне фотография Сталина — сильное и умное лицо старого тигра. При жизни Сталина никогда его портретов у меня не висело и не стояло, а здесь взял и повесил. Это был не сталинизм, а скорей нечто вроде дворянско-интеллигентского гонора: вот когда у вас висели, у меня не висел, а теперь, когда у вас не висят, у меня висит. Кроме того, эта фотография нравилась мне.150 I was not a devout Stalinist neither in 1953, nor in 1954, not during Stalin’s life. But in 1954, I placed a photograph of Stalin that I liked in my office – a strong and smart face of an old tiger. While Stalin was alive, I’ve never had any of his portraits adorning my walls, and suddenly I put one up. That wasn’t Stalinism, it was rather a nobleman-intellegentsia code of honor: when you had those portrait up, I hadn’t, but now, when you took them down, I do have one up. Besides, I really liked the photograph. This excerpt shows that even the former anti-Stalinists — following a peculiar code of honor — decided to hold on to the myth precisely at the time of its upmost denigration.                                                                                                                 149  Tertz,  “On  Socialist  Realism”,  217.   150  Simonov,  “Glazami  Cheloveka  Moego  Pokolenia”.     105   Moreover, the passage illustrates how the physical portrait of Stalin — the silent surveillance mechanism installed within every family circle — merges with the symbolic “portrait”, the visual component of the Stalin myth. In a similar spirit, the removal of Stalin's body from the mausoleum in 1961, as well as the attempts to extirpate Stalin's name from the public zone, add popularity to the myth. The “negative myth” is especially appealing, just like the forbidden fruit. The literary works of the period testify to the high semantic potential that the figure of Stalin had acquired. It is still the tension between Stalin's supreme, admirable abilities and his evil genius, on which the mythological subject is founded, the “portrait” of the dissident intelligentsia. The famous sociologist Boris Dubin attests to the attractiveness of this duality to seemingly anti-Stalinist Soviet novelists: “Демоническая соблазнительность, опасная привлекательность этой двойственности для интеллигентского сознания была самокритично отмечена Андреем Синявским в автобиографическом романе “Спокойной ночи”, как болезненная, не подвластная сознательному контролю сосредоточенность на сталинской фигуре.”151 (“The demonic temptation, the dangerous attractiveness of this duality for the consciousness of the intelligentsia member had been self-critically noted by Andrei Siniavskii in his autobiographical novel “Good Night”, as a sick, uncontrolled fixation on the figura of Stalin.”) However, many other liberal-critical novels of the 1960s-80s (such as Vasilii Grosman's “Zhizn’ i Sudba”, Yurii Dombrovskii's “Fakul'tet Nenuzhnykh Veshei”, Fazil Iskander's “Sandro iz Chegema” and Anatolii Rybakov's “Deti Arbata”) continued to revolve around the same mythological axis, unable to break out of the manic obsession. It is only Andrei Bitov’s                                                                                                                 151  Boris  Dubin,  “Stalin  I  Drugie:  Figury  Vysshei  Vlasti  v  Obshestvennom  Mnenii  Sovremennoi  Rossii”   Monitoring  Obshestvennogo  Mnenia  1  (63)  (2003):  3.  Henceforth  cited  as:  Dubin,  “Stalin  i  Drugie”,   followed  by  page  number.       106   “Pushkinskii Dom” (discussed in the introduction) which does not strive to reconstruct the “portrait” of Stalin, but offers a way out of the vicious circle through the fragmentation of the whole of the sign per se and strives for a reconciliation with Russia’s Stalinist past through the renegotiation of history. In the late Brezhnev period, especially in connection to Stalin's centenary in 1979, the Leader's name and image are gradually returned to the press and to history books, and are again reevaluated in a positive light. Dubin explains this “return” through the renewal and replication of the ideologemes of the “Soviet nation” and “Soviet man” as special historical phenomena: “При этом с фигурой Сталина, его стилем руководства, способностями “великого стратега” стала связываться индустриально-военная мощь советского государства и победа в Отечественной войне.”152 (“The figure of Stalin, his style of leadership and the talents of a “great strategian” began to be associated with the industrial-military might of the Soviet State and with the victory in the Great Patriotic War.”) Since by that time, the concept of the Great Patriotic War was already formed (in the Russian consciousness) into the leading event of the 20th century (and another grand myth), the myth of Stalin — inseparable from that of the Patriotic War — returned with a vengeance, undergoing a rapid shift back to the “positive” pole. It seems that Stalin’s ‘portrait’ wavers between its own “positive” and “negative” mythologies, both of which are inherent to the sign and allow convenient manipulation when the need arises. By the end of the Perestroika period and the beginning of the 90s, the “negative mythology” had returned: many resources were invested in the de- Stalinization process, and Stalin was presented as responsible for the destitution and poor                                                                                                                 152  Dubin,  “Stalin  i  Drugie”.    5.     107   social organization of the country.153 Public opinion was mainly moderated by strong de- Stalinization politics in the media. Some programs and films made and shown at this time were straightforward and direct, while others were more subtle, offering criticism of Stalinism disguised as Stalinist propaganda. Semyon Aranovich’s documentary Opyt Dokumetal’noi Mifologii ili Ya sluzhil v Okhrane Stalina, filmed and produced in 1989 by Lenfilm, belongs to this second category. The documentary features a monotonous hour and a half long monologue by Anatoly Rybin, an 80-year-old man who used to work as Stalin’s bodyguard at the famous Blizhniaia dacha. His speech is circumstantial and unhurried, as he relates the everyday reality of his previous life, and details of the Leader’s family. The visuals consist of documentary footage: selected excerpts from the public and private life of the Leader in what seems to be a careful and loving reconstruction of his mythological portrait. Meanwhile, Rybin uncovers touching details of Stalin’s life: he tells of the old boots in which Stalin passed away, of his love of children, of his friendship with Kirov and of the meager sum of money — 4 rubles, 10 kopecks — posthumously found on his sberknizhka. Since directorial commentary is absent, the naive spectator may find this blatant, overt Stalinism, bordering on simple cinematic fetishism, abhorrent. Yet one must keep in mind the first of the two names of the documentary: “Opyt Dokumental’noi Mifologii”. This is precisely the desired directorial commentary: it is not within the film, it precedes it. Aranovich preconditions his film to be an experiment in mythology making, a sample of mythology that is disguised as documentary: the most                                                                                                                 153  It  was  quite  profitable  to  the  new  government  to  show  that  it  was  the  Soviet  regime  in  general   that  had  brought  the  State  to  the  edge.       108   dangerous kind. Svetlana Boym pinpoints the danger of such a mythology: “Documentary mythology might sound like an oxymoron, but only if one differentiates the historical from the mythological consciousness and considers the documentary to be a factual representation, devoid of myth and mystification.”154 Aranovich warns us of the danger, of the “documentary” trap, simultaneously revealing his unsophisticated devices: the documentary form and the cleverly arranged cinematic frame. Imperceptibly, Aranovich prepares us for the finale, which allows Rybin to introduce his young trainees – his accordion pupils. Rybin’s accordion class radiates an aggressively Soviet atmosphere and mentality. The visual background shifts to documentary shots of pioneers singing to Stalin with a huge banner in the background, which says «Stalinu slava»; as it shifts back to the accordion class and to Rybin himself playing the instrument, one realizes that the spirit of Stalinism is as present as ever. Aranovich demonstrates how thin the line is between de-Stalinization and Stalinist propaganda, the shocking relatedness and similarity of these two diametrically opposed agendas, which, in fact, only differ from each other by the direction of discourse, as both claim to be the “true” “portrait”. The only artists who manage to avoid the trap are the Conceptualists who initially operate with concepts and constructs rather than historical representations. An example worth studying is Victor Korkia’s play “Chiornyi Chelovek ili Ya Bednyi Soso Dzhugashvili”. First staged in 1988 in the MGU (Moskovskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet) student theater by Evgenii Slavutin, it later appeared on many stages of the USSR, provoking much uproar and many passionate public reactions. The play analyzes and deconstructs the framework of the Stalin myth through a presentation of the comical,                                                                                                                 154  Svetlana  Boym,  Common  Places:  Mythologies  of  Everyday  Life  in  Russia,  Cmbridge:  Harvard   University  Press,  1994,  248.     109   grotesque, fantastic version of the friendship and rivalry of Stalin and Beria (of course, these are not the historical characters, but the mass-mediated, layered images that are present in the contemporary consciousness – in short, the mythological constructs of Stalin and Beria). The author, a representative of the second generation of Russian post- modernists, subtitles the play: “a paratragedy”. Written in white verse, in a chaotic, carnivalesque spirit, the play mixes the real with the fantastic, and plays with citations of classical texts, with identities, and with the audience. Stylistically, the versification of the play manifests the absence of pretension to “objectification” and preconditions a certain playfulness, an invitation to play together. Mihail Epstein places Korkia in the group of ironic poets (“Unlike Conceptualism, which works with language models, ironic poetry works with reality itself at the level of concrete utterances and ideolects”155), yet this particular play is very rich in Conceptualist tactics and devices. True, the strong authorial presence and the importance of provoking laughter unite it with the tradition of ironic poetry; however, other than having a kinship to works by Prigov and Rubinstein, the play possesses many traits characteristic of Conceptualism, particularly an enriched play with signs and self- reflective language. The plot of the play is quite unelaborate: Beria, after years of spying on Stalin, has finally prepared an anonymous denunciation of him and sends a “black man” to deliver it to the Generalissimos himself in order to provoke his already uncontrolled paranoia and create a dangerous intrigue. Masterfully using the plain plot structure, Korkia employs a plentitude of post-modern devices and games. First and foremost,                                                                                                                 155  Mihail  Epstein,  “A  Catalogue  of  New  Poetries”  in  Russian  Post-­‐Modernism:  New  Perspectives  on   Post-­‐Soviet  Culture,  Ed.  Slobodanka  Vladiv-­‐Glover  (New  York  &  Oxford:  Berghahn  Books,  1999),  147.     110   Korkia resorts to a favorite post-modern tactic – the saturation of the text with multiple, constant citations and allusions. He uses both direct quotations (such as Pushkin’s line from “Mozart and Salieri” in the beginning of Stalin’s first monologue: "Все говорят: нет правды на земле. Но правды нет и выше..."156) and referential allusions, such as the theme of poisoning, which relates us both to “Hamlet” and to “Mozart and Salieri”. He also makes use of Shakespearean iambic pentameter The main parallel drawn is, of course, to “Mozart and Salieri”, as one of the dominant themes of the play is the complex love-hate relationship of two supposed friends. Yet the shrewd combination of the classical discourse with the discourse of mass culture (namely its obsession with political and literary images) subjects the characters of Stalin and Beria to an ironic recoding. Endowing his characters’ speech with a high literary style, Korkia does not rid them of their novoyaz clichés and of their criminal parlance, thus creating jester-like, parodic characters that seem to be caricatures of their own mythologies. However, the allusion to Pushkin’s play is not a straightforward one: Korkia toys with the parallels suggested by it. Since he enjoys the literalization of metaphors, the atmosphere of distrust and paranoia in the Kremlin is illustrated by both protagonists suspiciously echoing each other: СТАЛИН (Из–за сфинкса). Кто здесь?! БЕРИЯ. Кто здесь?! СТАЛИН. Кто здесь?! БЕРИЯ. Кто здесь?!157 STALIN (from behind the sphinx). Who’s there?!                                                                                                                 156  Victor  Korkia,  Chiornyi  Chelovek  ili  Ya  Bednyi  Soso  Dzhugashvili  (Moscow:  Moskovskij  Rabochij,   1989,),  5.   157  Korkia,  Chiornyj  Chelovek,  17.     111   BERIA. Who’s there?! STALIN. Who’s there? BERIA. Who’s there?! Though the paranoid Stalin is the first to ask the question, it is eventually unclear who is echoing whom; this illustrates the entire relationship of Beria and Stalin in the play. Though in the beginning Beria clearly positions himself as Salieri, he later confesses to meeting the “black man”. He is, then, a Salieri who wishes to play Mozart, or, rather, they are both Salieris who are rivals for Mozart’s title Their roles are unclear and wavering; changed and unfixed as elusive utterings they are themselves confused about their positions and places. Stalin tries on the masks Mozart and Salieri in turn; he steps out of his mythologized essence as the eternal signified and tries to be a signifier instead – an essence evoking another essence. Naturally, he is destined to fail: the assumption of another’s image only leads to a bitter self-mockery. Moreover, Stalin’s own identity is unstable: while he fails to acquire the identities of Pushkin’s characters, his own identity is quite successfully impersonated by an actor. The author’s note in the beginning of the second act allows the actors playing Stalin and Beria to change their roles. As if the author suggests that, since both Stalin and Beria are mythological constructs, they are birds of a feather, made of the same mythological material. Consequently the exchange is not only acceptable, but effortlessly attained. If that suggestion were not enough, later in the second act, the actor playing Beria reminds the actor playing Stalin of this possibility: “Напомнить разреши, товарищ Сталин, / нам режиссер отнюдь не запрещал / ролями поменяться. Каждый   112   хочет / роль Сталина сыграть. И я хочу./ Прошу, как брата.”158 (“Allow me to remind you, comrade Stalin, the Director did not forbid us to exchange roles. Everyone wants to play the role of Stalin. And I do too. I ask you like a brother.”) “Stalin” as a sign is altogether desirable and loose – wavering between its signified and signifier aspects. This leads to the utter confusion of the myth, which is torn between two opposite functions. This is reflected in Korkia’s play, as “Stalin” ceases to understand where the persona of Stalin ends and the myth of Stalin begins. He becomes the slave of his own mythology, which is at once rigid and undefined: too rigid to reach outside its boundaries, too undefined to recapture the lost self. This perplexity is exactly what makes Stalin reach out to literary characters and steal their speech: since he cannot find his own essence, he frantically borrows identities of others. He becomes a vampiric character, renovating and rejuvenating the slogans and clichés relevant to his myth. Simultaneously, as Stalin’s identity (however confused) is still highly desirable, it is contested and claimed by the other characters in the play: СТАЛИН. Я – гений всех времен товарищ Сталин! ПОПУГАЙ. Я – гений всех времен товарищ Сталин! ФИГУРА. И я товарищ Сталин всех времен! СТАЛИН. Нет, я! ПОПУГАЙ. Нет, я! ФИГУРА. Нет, я!159 STALIN. I’m the genius of all times comrade Stalin! PARROT. I’m the genius of all times comrade Stalin! FIGURE. And I’m too comrade Stalin of all times! STALIN. No, it’s me! PARROT. Not, it’s me! FIGURE. Not, it’s me!                                                                                                                 158  Korkia,  Chiornyi  Chelovek,  41.   159  Ibid,  53.     113   This dialogue has echoes of “Dialogue # 5” by Dmitry Prigov in his “Dialogues with Comrade Stalin”. In Prigov’s conversation, Prigov takes on the role of the “holy fool” — a naïve parrot of sorts — just repeating everything that Stalin says. Stalin’s speech is also a repetition and not authentic: he expresses himself solely by citations, whether those are lines from Pushkin’s poem or a quote from a popular song about Stalin. Thus, the character of “Prigov” — a very close representation of the authorial persona — is engaged in a double repetition, which exposes the artificial meaninglessness of the cliché-pattern which is an integral part of the mythological discourse on Stalin. Suddenly, the dialogue is radically shifted, as Prigov and Stalin change places. Prigov asks Stalin what would happen if one letter is taken away from his name, and Stalin answers that it would become “Talin”. When Prigov’s Stalin gives the answer, he simultaneously utters what had been imposed on him by the authorial persona and becomes the word he utters: the character answering to Prigov’s question is no longer “Stalin”, but “Talin”. This game continues, and, one by one, Prigov removes letters from Stalin’s name, finally reducing him to nought. After the last question posed by Prigov to “N” (“And if to take another one away?”), no answer follows. By alluding to the verbal nature of the Stalin myth, accentuating its verbal substance and pure sign value, Prigov demonstrates the emptiness behind a mythological construction. Korkia uses the mechanism of repetition to a similar end: the insistent echoing throughout the play reflects the endless reproductive pattern of the myth, of the dead end in which all of the characters find themselves in their search for identity. When the “black man” finally brings Beria’s denunciation dossier to Stalin, it reveals itself to be the   114   manuscript of a play by the unknown Victor Korkia. When read aloud, the manuscript copies word for word everything that Stalin said earlier, and the play is rerun again from the beginning, like a broken record. The play’s structure thus illustrates the perfect mythical circle, forever quoting and repeating itself. (The same label of an “endless linguistic tape”, which Epstein applies to Lev Rubinstein’s poetry160, can be employed to characterize this device of Korkia.) The mysterious Figure character is not just another impostor who lays claims to being Stalin; in a joint reminiscence of Hamlet and Pushkin’s Stone Guest it reveals itself to be the spirit of vengeance: СТАЛИН. Ты кто?.. ФИГУРА. Министр скульптуры. Дай мне руку. СТАЛИН. Зачем?! Ты кто?.. ФИГУРА. Я – сорок тысяч братьев, и все сгорают от любви к тебе! […] ФИГУРА. Без нервов, Сосо. Я внутри тебя хочу поковырять твоим же пальцем. Дай руку мне. СТАЛИН. Нет!.. Нет!.. ФИГУРА. Боишься, да?.. Напрасно. И тебе неинтересно, что у тебя внутри?161 STALIN. Who are you?.. FIGURE. I'm the minister of sculpture. Give me your hand. STALIN. What for?! Who are you?.. FIGURE. I'm forty thousand brothers, and all are burning with dear love for you! […] FIGURE. Relax, Soso. I want to pick your insides with your own finger. Give me your hand. STALIN. No!.. No!.. FIGURE. Are you afraid?.. Too bad. And aren't you curious to find out what you've got inside?                                                                                                                 160  Mihail  Epstein,  After  The  Future:  The  Paradoxes  of  Postmodernism  and  Contemporary  Russian   Culture  (Amherst:  The  University  of  Massachussets  Press,  1995),  31.   161  Korkia,  Chiornyi  Chelovek,  54.     115   The Figure — Stalin’s “black man” — is his stone guest or, rather, his stone myth. The disjoined, separated myth that has outgrown his creator, the independent myth leading its own life; the mythical lost signified that has come back to kill its own pitiful master, to punish him for his ineptitude. It is no wonder Stalin is so reluctant to let the prodigal signified pick his inside: his “inside” is absence, and he knows that his own myth will find nothing within. On one hand, the constant tension between the signified and signifier parts of the myth makes it invulnerable to demythologizing attacks. On the other, torn between its signified and signifier functions, it is caught in a trap created by the impossibility of self-definition; in fact, it is destined to erase and cancel itself over and over After the symbolic “death”, the Figure and the Parrot comically disembowel the “mythical body” of Stalin in a typical desacralization of the metanarrative. Just like many post-modern works, this play presupposes the engagement of the audience. Casting them as the narod, Korkia makes them a character in the performance. However, their role is at times unclear and controversial. In one of his dying, final fits of delirium, Stalin “ghosts” the audience: “И вы!.. Вы все – химеры!.. / Всех расстрелять!.. ” (“And you too!.. All of you are ghosts!.. Shoot away everyone!”) In his turn, the ultimate myth tries to mystify others. Perhaps, at this particular instant Korkia uses the opportunity to comment on art in Stalinist times - as defined by Paperny, during the rule of culture 2 “искусство “уплощалось” так, чтобы из зрительного зала оно казалось жизнью. Жизнь старалась “уплощаться” так, чтобы казаться искусством. Жизнь старалась видеть себя происходящей на сцене.”162 (“Art had been ‘made dense’ in such a way to appear as reality to the audience. And life had been trying to                                                                                                                 162  Paperny,  Kultura  2,  12.     116   “dense up” to appear as art. Life was making an effort to see itself as happening onstage.”) Yet even more so, this is a commentary on the mythic quality of the people who are infected by the myth, as in Victor Denisov's play from the previous chapter. As “Stalin” becomes “Stalin’s Mummy”, the after-myth or the post-myth, he directly addresses the audience on the topic of mythology-making: “Но миф, / но миф о бедном Сосо Джугашвили / лишь только начинается. Салют! / Великий Вождь скончался. Все встают!163” (But the myth, the myth of poor Soso Dzhugashvili only begins. Salute! The Great Leader has passed away, get up, everyone!”) He implies, in fact, that the real life of a myth — free and separate — begins after the death of the subject. The myth of Stalin had been liberated by Stalin’s death, just like the death of “Stalin’s myth” liberates the myth of “Stalin’s myth”, the surviving simulacrum. It depends on the audience — on each and every one of the spectators — whether it thrives or fades. What is in question here is the remarkable survival of myths through a distorted replication. The spectators should ask themselves whether they are, too, true to the mechanism that produces simulacrums; this is why the character of Stalin names the audience “ghosts” – he wishes to “cast” them as such to render them identical to himself. However, the inner mechanism of the play does not allow him to succeed. While being an excellent mythological trap in itself, the play shamelessly reveals its devices, its inner workings and constructions, even its theatrical conditionality. This is a play that is aware of its own performativity, of its context, constantly referring to the reality of the theater and to the illusions of the text. Everything is uncovered: the author of Beria’s text is announced as Korkia: the characters continuously emphasize their                                                                                                                 163  Korkia,  Chiornyi  Chelovek,  67.     117   fictional life within a fictional play. The self-reflective nature of the script makes it constantly refer to itself, reminding the reader of its fictional status. Entire spaces are deliberately written out to allow the actors to step out of their roles, referring to the meta- dramatic skeleton: “Автор написал, / что он не исключает варианта, / когда – читай! – “К примеру, акт второй / с того начаться может, что актеры / меняются ролями...”164 (“The author writes that he doesn’t exclude this possibility, when – read it – ‘for instance, second act may begin with the actors changing roles…’”) At the same time, however, having read the play, one knows that those lines are a part of it; the actors are simultaneously stepping out of the play and following it. In a similar manner, the character of Stalin announces the intermission after the first act and orders the censorship of Korkia’s play (the very play he is in, the play that has given him his life as a character and a myth). The insistently liminal state of the characters, the actors, and the author inevitably infects the audience with a certain degree of liminality. They are within the play due to their (supposed) participation; they are outside it due to the constant demonstration and exposure of the play’s fictitious nature. The spectators are invited to participate in the mythology, to playfully demythologize. The playwright, the actors and the characters set an example to the audience by their deliberately liminal status in relation to the play. A choice of either side — of being within or outside the play — may mean surrendering to myth; while the refusal to make a choice, the attempt to balance on the thin line between presence and absence may save one from the trap of definition, so integral to mythology.                                                                                                                 164  Korkia,  Chiornyi  Chelovek,  41.     118   An important Conceptualist homage to the “Stalin myth” is Dmitry Prigov’s Dvadtsat’ Rasskazov o Staline (20 short stories on Stalin). This is a selection of miniatures in the style of the Kharmsian anecdotes on canonical Russian writers, which evolves around Stalin’s interaction with other characters – both real (like Trotsky and Bukharin) and fictitious, and is based on exaggerated mythological conventions of the iconic image. The utilization of famous quotations by Stalin – utterly recontextualized – creates a parodic effect. Instead of dissecting and deconstructing the myth, Prigov reconstructs it, creating concentrated, versions of the Stalin submyths that are exaggerated to the point of ridicule. This concerns both cliché-myths (such as the representation of Stalin as a man of giant height and great physical strength) and “religious myths” (such as the idea that Stalin’s words make a deadly wounded soldier rise again and fight). Thus, Prigov achieves his goal not through demythologization, but through remythologization, using the mythological weapon against itself, making the myth betray himself. The next selection of anecdotes - “7 new short stories on Stalin” – hyperbolizes and mocks Stalin’s vampiricism, featuring it in absurd contexts (Prigov’s Stalin shoots his son for stealing from an old lady; he shoots his comrades on the spot, when they want to talk to him, etc.) All of the miniatures in this sequence end with Stalin murdering someone, which is followed by the line: “а труп велел немедленно закопать.” In fact, the only corpse present in Prigov’s sequences on Stalin is the corpse of Russian history. If the second sequence puts Stalin in the context of dislocated history (where the tsarist past is conflated with the 1970s paranoid fear and hatred of America), the first one grants Stalin the company of the fictitious character of the film “Chapaev” (later also featured in   119   many anecdotes) the machine-gunner Anka, uniting them in the frame of the Russian Civil War. The exceptional freedom provided to Prigov by an unlimited drawing on the myth itself, allows him to include the historical plane in his game of remythologization. The phantasmagorical qualities of history in Prigov’s exercises are an exaggerated embodiment of the timeless utopia of the “Stalin” myth: it is so timeless and endless that not only can it easily merge two historical planes, it can perform the ultimate transgression: to conflate fiction with nonfiction. Prigov shows how the Stalin myth expands, absorbing everything it finds to hand and disregarding the blatantly fictitious quality of its narratives. The remythologizing hyperbole practiced by the Conceptualists is not only applied to verbal matter. In fact, the concentrated expansion of the Stalin myth was the favorite tactic of the Sots-Art movement. Holding to the belief that all art represents power, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, consistently retained that power throughout the art world of their paintings. Their canvases show Stalin in the company of either muses or monsters, pointing to both initial components of the myth: the God/Devil duality. The image of Stalin is a sharp, grotesque reflection of the Stalin myth, however never grotesque enough to appear merely as caricature. Even the most surrealistic, ridiculous Sots-Art paintings do not neglect to demonstrate Stalin as the origin of power.165 However, it is precisely the duality of this approach — the liminality of recontextualizing the sign while both retaining and not retaining its status of power — which creates the sensation of sinister styob. Boris Groys calls those paintings “a session                                                                                                                 165  Due to this trait of Sots-Art, the styob nature of the movement had not been immediately acknowledged, and the artists had been accused of a vindicating eulogy of the Generalissimo.     120   of social psychoanalysis that retrieves from the Soviet subconscious a mythology whose existence no one is prepared to acknowledge even to themselves.”166 Komar and Melamid’s “Stalin” is then the reflection of the collective lost, but sturdy myth of the post-de-Stalinization era: a myth that has attracted a multitude of mismatching, unfitting contemporary realia and allusions, an awkward, confused, but surviving myth. In fact, akin to Prigov, Prigov, Komar and Melamid benefit from the conflation of different historical and aesthetic planes. As Groys remarks: “The myth of Komar and Melamid is richer and more varied than that of Stalin, which is still bound to its modernist claim to exclusiveness. These best pupils of his are rescued from their teacher by the fact they simulate a project that is even more grandiose than his.”167 The myth of Stalin — hopelessly prostituted by pop culture (reflecting the reality of its sign), inflated with a myriad of significations and allusions — can no longer be taken so seriously: the actual signified, drowning under many foreign, forced signifiers, is well hidden, unseen, forgotten. It is once again not resistance, but an active and acute participation in the myth that unarms it. The expansion of the myth beyond all imaginable limits inflates it to unbearable proportions until it bursts. The turbulent, merciless 90s generated yet another series of Stalin “portraits”. The difficulty of life and the everyday challenges that arose in the chaotic aftermath of the collapsed system brought back feelings of nostalgia towards more secure and clearly defined times. If in 1989, Stalin is not even in the “first ten “most prominent people in the country’s history”, in 1994, he is number ten.168 However, the newly emerged Russian                                                                                                                 166  Boris  Groys,  The  Total  Art  of  Stalinism.  (London  &  New  York:  Verso,  2011),  92.   167  Groys,  The  Total  Art  of  Stalinism,  93.   168  Boris  Dubin,  Interview,  October  11,  2011.     121   citizen still struggled to redefine his identity in contrast to the deceased Soviet one, therefore, the nostalgia was not expressed overtly, but implied through the representation of the glory of Stalin’s epoch, while the figure of Stalin himself was either denigrated or missing. “Stalin” then came to represent the lost magnificence and potency of the Soviet Empire. A telling example would be Andrey Konchalovsky’s Inner Circle, filmed in 1991 in Hollywood with a mixed Russian and American cast (the cinematic trend of this period being what Svetlana Boym calls “exporting Stalinist mythology to the international market”169, by creating films about Stalin outside of Russia or by casting foreign actors for principal roles in such films.) Featuring the period between 1949 and 1953, the film tells the story of Stalin's private projectionist and KGB officer Ivan Sanchin. It is told from Sanchin's own viewpoint, convincingly portraying his unwavering faith in his “Master”, unshaken by the arrest of Sanchin’s neighbors, his wife's forced affair with Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations he witnesses within the Kremlin. Konchalovsky’s Stalin (impersonated by Alexander Zbruev) is young, rather fashionable and very vague, whilst his most outstanding feature is his love of cinematography. What strikes awe and terror into the members of the inner circle is not the figure of Stalin, but the symbols that stand for Stalin. They may be of varied nature and significance: Stalin’s bust in a half-ruined World War II Moscow, an armchair that maintains the warmth of Stalin’s body, the delirious ghost of Stalin created by the hero’s inflamed imagination after his wife’s suicide, the motionless Stalin in the open coffin at his own funeral, and, most fearsome of all, Stalin’s name with its charged potential, the                                                                                                                 169  Boym,  Common  Places,  245.     122   secret password one uses to attain immediate dread and obedience. It is made clear that these are the numerous signifiers of Stalin that acquire the charged potential of his “signified” identity, which is blurred and elusive. Moreover, it is mainly by others’ reactions that we judge Stalin, whether it is the blind adoration of the protagonist or the fearful hatred of his wife or of his neighbor, the professor. While showing Stalin’s complete devilry through the eyes of others, the film (in the spirit of the post-Khruschev era) never questions the main foundation of the myth: Stalin’s greatness. It is evident in his hypnotic powers, in the horror he evokes even implicitly, in the significance of his appearances in the movie, where he is presented as an evil genius, in the comparison of him to Satan, made by several characters. Altogether, while thus employing the negative mythology, Konchalovsky shows the splendid life of the Stalinist circles. As Boym notes: “In no rush to demystify, the director engages in something like a remythologization, a mythical recreation, with parades of athletes, triumphant marches, white suits and red roses…”170 “The Abyss”, a 1992 film by Ivan Dykhovichnyof Russian, German and French production, which follows the fate of the wife of an NKVD officer in the 30s, is guilty of a similar nostalgic representation of the glamorous myths of the Soviet elite. Thus, the 90s films present an indirect fascination with Stalin: in bypassing Stalin’s persona, they focus on the aesthetic appeal of totalitarian culture. Vladimir Sorokin — the only writer who still continued (even if only partially) the Conceptualist project in the 90s — hastened to respond with the scandalous novel “Goluboe Salo” (published in 1999.) Like Prigov and the Sots-Art artists, Sorokin                                                                                                                 170  Boym,  Common  Places,  246.     123   demonstrated that a hyper indulgence in mythology may be an adequate way of demythologization. In his novel, Sorokin reflects the 90s fascination with the totalitarian aesthetic by creating its concentrated, heightened, somewhat fantastical form. However, Sorokin’s “Stalin” (in the newly invented 1954) is about 50 years old, handsome and refined. He is at the same time a friend of Hitler and Khrushchev’s ardent lover. In short, he is nothing like any of the “Stalin” mythologemes; rather, he is an inversion of sorts of the most clichéd images of both “postive” and “negative” mythology, characteristics that are incongruous with any extant concept of Stalin. Through the process of reading this figure of “Stalin” — a construction of reversed concepts — one is inevitably drawn into a liminal position: the reader is reading this new, illogical, surprising “Stalin”, while mentally holding on to the familiar iconic image. This tension between the two conceptions creates a discrepancy, a contradicting duality, which automatically counters the alleged process of remythologization. As Lipovetsky writes: Two processes occur simultaneously: the remythologization of the discourse, the reconstruction of its ritual semantics, is combined with the consequent revelation of the discourse’s contradictions – in a word, with the deconstruction of the discourse, which brings it into a state of absurdity or complete chaos. Since both of these processes take place simultaneously, the result is the mythology of the absurd, the ritual of incorporation into chaos.171 The forced conflation of the myth and of its inverted double exposes the “overload”, the exhaustion of the “Stalin” sign (just like in Korkia’s play), to a total, uncompromising degree. The sign is not only corrupted, it is omnipotent in its corruption, it is — like any other creation of myth and history — completely helpless when trapped by language (i.e. falling into its own trap). Not surprisingly, when projected into the                                                                                                                 171  Mark  Lipovetsky,  Russian  Postmodernist  Fiction:  Dialogue  with  Chaos  (Armonk  &  London:  M.E.   Sharpe,  1999),  214.     124   ahistorical conditional space of the future 21st century, “Stalin” reacquires the stereotypical traits of the general “portrait”: the Georgian accent, the moustache, etc. It is only in this utopian, sterile dimension, freed by the writer from history and language172, that the myth of Stalin can regain its common, familiar traits. Importantly, this transformation of the persona of Stalin occurs after he injects the mysterious substance of goluboe salo into his brain, making his brain grow and expand to unimaginable proportions, until it penetrates the sun; once it sucks in the sun, the planets of the galaxy begin revolving around Stalin’s brain, a hinted reference to the “Stalin-as-Sun” mythologem. Thus, Sorokin offers a commentary on his own authorial task and the process of mythological treatment: the hyperbolic expansion, the grandiose, grotesque penetration of the “Stalin myth” into the cosmos results in a deflation of the sign, in its reduction to the most impoverished stereotype. The myth is exposed in its destitution and flatness as a paradoxical sign, which exists to cancel itself and cancels itself to exist. In the 2000s Stalinist mythology achieved new heights. In an interview, Boris Dubin dismissed Stalin as an unreal political figure in the eyes of contemporary Russians, but a valid symbolic construction; at the same time, he admitted that in the first decade of the 2000s positive evaluations of Stalin skyrocketed. The FOM website presented us with more exact information based on a 2011 survey: 47% percent of the Russian population claimed that Stalin played a positive role in the country’s history (while only 29% considered his role negative, and the rest find it difficult to answer the question); and it is not only the older survey participants (above 55) who judge Stalin’s role positively                                                                                                                 172  In  Sorokin’s  future,  the  language  is  a  thwarted,  half-­‐foreign  dialect,  not  completely   understandable  to  the  reader.     125   (58%), but also a quite large percentage (39%) of the young generation.173 In fact, when dividing the survey results into generational categories, the positive evaluations of Stalin by the Medvedev generation manifest a significant growth (34% compared to 28% in Putin’s generation).174 The VCIOM organization offered similar data in 2011, while also tracking the increase of Stalin's supporters and the decline of his detractor from 2010 to 2011. The number of Russians who considered Stalin’s role positively increased from 15% to 26%, while those who were convinced of the opposite fell from 33% to 24%. 175 If that were not enough, concepts are perversely reversed, and it is now not “Stalin”, but “de- Stalinization”, which is viewed as the most dangerous myth by the public. As the survey discovers: Большинство россиян (45%) считают “десталинизацию” мифом, не имеющим ничего общего с реальными задачами, стоящими перед страной, и полагают, что в случае реализации десталинизация просто исковеркает историческое сознание, сделает его однобоким.”176 (“The vast majority of Russians (45%) consider the destanilization to be a myth, which has nothing in common with real goals the country faces, and they assume that – if implemented – the destalinization will simply thwart the historical consciousness, making it one-sided.”) If the contemporary Russian indeed sees Stalin not as an adored leader, but merely as a symbolical construction, it is definitely an incredibly charged and meaningful one. Russian sociologists offer several explanations for this rekindled passion. One of                                                                                                                 173  Grigorii  Kertman,  “XX с»ezd KPSS: Razoblachenie Kul'ta Lichnosti,” The FOM Website, accessed Nov. 25, 2011, www.fom.ru   174  “Lichnost’  I.  Stalina.  Opros  FOMnibus,”  The  FOM  Website,  accessed  Nov.  25,  2011,  www.fom.ru     175  “VCIOM  press-­‐release  #  1741,  27.04.2011”,  The  WCIOM  Website,  accessed  Dec.  2,  2011,   www.wciom.ru     176  Ibid.       126   them is an inability to deal with a negative representation of the past. Sergey Krivenko, a board member of the Memorial organization which is in charge of the de-Stalinization project laments: “Тема реабилитации, тема раскрытия архивов, оценки прошлого в последние десятилетия сходит на нет в общественном сознании и более того идет движение назад.”177 (“The theme of rehabilitation, the theme of opening up the archives and reevaluatinf the past, is diminishing in the public consciousness for the past decade; even more, it regresses backwards.”) While the authorities are most reluctant to allow access to the archives, the people perceive the naming of crimes as the most sensitive, difficult aspect of de-Stalinization. Similarly to the feeling of Khrushchev’s generation as described by Simonov, contemporary Russian people fear that a public confession of the numerous crimes of the Stalinist regime would lead to the blackening of their entire Soviet past. In the minds of many, this superfluous self-flagellation would make Stalinist Russia appear the same as fascist Germany, and that is an allusion that public opinion would never allow. Krivenko mentions that mature post-traumatic analysis of the past is especially challenging for Russians, since (unlike in Germany), the divide between victims and persecutors has always been blurred: “Жертвы и палачи перемешаны: во всех местах захоронения они лежат рядом. Те палачи, которые стреляли – это первый этап, на втором этапе они сами были растреляны.” 178 (“Victims and murderers are mixed: they often lie together in all places of burial. The murderers who shot other people down – that was the first stage. At the second stage, those people themselves had been shot down.”)                                                                                                                 177  Sergei  Krivenko,  Interview,  November  8th,  2011.   178  Ibid.           127   As if coping with the post-traumatic syndrome of a changed society were not difficult enough, it is doubly challenging within a new societal structure, which has nothing to offer in return for the losses of the old one. The 90s, being a time of chaos, decay, breakdown, and economical and political instability, offer little consolation. By the 2000s, a very negative image of the 90s (consisting of the above constructs) had formed in the public consciousness. Dubin claims that this was not necessarily achieved in the mind of the average citizen, but may be also artificially made by the propaganda work of Putin's government, which operates through the media,179 yet, in any case, by now it is thoroughly fixed. In contrast with those judgments, the Soviet times (with Stalin as their emblem) appear as more stable, predictable, and even more economically prosperous. The illusion of the numerous advantages of Soviet life helps the modern Russian to accept his or her past without experiencing existential horror. According to Dubin, the Soviet past and Stalin are interchangeably linked: “По мере реабилитации советского стал реабилитироваться и Сталин, и наоборот – по мере реабилитации сталинского образа в глазах большинства стало реабилитироваться и советское.”180 (“The rehabilitation of the Soviet rehabilitates Stalin, and vice versa.”) The most popular mythical construct holds Stalin responsible for making the Soviet Union a strong, industrialized country, and this is exactly how a large portion of the population would like to picture themselves, as living in a state that is respected and feared. Dubin reiterates: “Большая часть населения исходит из образа России, как большой страны, сильной и военизированной державы, к которой                                                                                                                 179  Dubin,  Interview.     180  Ibid.       128   прислушиваются (именно потому что она сильная и военизированная) другие страны мира.”181 (“A large portion of the population sees Russia as a great, strong and militarized country, which makes other countries take it into consideration (precisely due to the above qualities).” Since the image of Stalin is associated with the desirable qualities of the State, it is also associated with the hope of regaining them. Thus, in the present millennium, 2000s the Stalin myth stands for an “identity myth” more than ever – it becomes a myth that is supposed to answer the question “who we are” at times of a serious identity crisis. However, the patchy, contradictory 2000s do not reestablish the hegemony of any one variant of the Stalin myth. The “frustrated” sign, stuck in a constant process of self- negotiation, has however managed to yield a number of mythologemes, engendered by a multitude of its old and new signifiers (the ones abused by the “eternal signified” and the ones produced as a result of the numerous “portraits” of Stalin). Thus, contemporary Russia is filled with a number of Stalin cults, each somewhat altered and varied, and each linked to a different political or social agenda. For instance, the reflection of the Brezhnev version of the myth is lodged in Russia’s communist party, developed by its leader Gennadii Ziuganov. His book Stalin i Sovremennost’ clearly explains the fashioning of this myth of identity and its application to contemporary reality. The particulars of the myth in Zyuganov’s interpretation seem to be made specifically to appeal to Russia’s post-traumatic inferiority fixation. All of Stalin’s merits listed by Ziuganov (industrialization, collectivization, a cultural rise, the victory in World War II) are significant, as they transformed Russia into a leading world                                                                                                                 181  Dubin,  Interview.     129   state. Ziuganov’s Stalin is the powerful, decisive and willful builder of a superpower. The argument constantly used by the author of the book plays on the feeling of national pride, stressing the key point he makes in cursive: “С Россией начали считаться.”182 (“They’ve started to take Russia into account.”) Finally, in chapter four (“For Strong Russia”) Ziuganov lays out his rhetoric plainly: Russia needs to reacquire its lost potency and power, and must not submit to the West, which has always wanted to see Russia weak and on its knees. In order to become strong again, to achieve the lost status of a superpower, Russia must rediscover its legacy, to choose its own national path based on its exclusive historical past, which is certainly better than the unstable, unsafe present. Thus, Ziuganov, a sworn enemy of President Putin, uses the Stalin myth to convince the reader that his own candidacy is Russia's only hope to resurrect its past fame. Ziuganov's rhetoric is clearly a legacy of the discourse of Soviet propaganda: he employs the same lexicon, structure and argumentational logic. However, there is one important addition, as Ziuganov continuously resorts a popular construct and philosophical concept that is much discussed in post-modern times: myth. The appendix to Zyuganov's book, consisting of a booklet of “statistics”, named “Stalin's Epoch in Numbers and Facts”, is subtitled as “myths and reality”. Ziuganov not only falsifies history, but entirely fabricates his own statistics, which overstate the ways Stalin contributed to the scientific and economic development of the USSR and reduce the victims of repression to an insignificant number. He does not even make an effort to refer to any sources for this “knowledge”; yet he shamelessly dismisses all other data as myth.                                                                                                                 182  Gennadii  Ziuganov,  Stalin  i  Sovremennost’  (Moscow:  Molodaya  Gvardiya  2008),  171.     130   He treats any undesirable beliefs on Stalin or Russian history in a similar fashion: “Созданные ими мифы о Сталине по своей нелепости могут быть сравнимы разве что с бытовавшим когда-то представлением, что земля стоит на трех китах.”183; (“The myths they've created on Stalin are so ridiculous that they could only be compared to the once popular notion that earth stands on three whales.”) “Большое число людей с новым мышлением только позаимствовaло на западе старый миф о неотъемлемой черте русской истории – особой жестокости и варварстве.”184 (”Many people who possess the new way of thinking have adopted the old myth of the West on an indispensable trait of Russian character – a special kind of cruelty and guile.”) Considering the constant appearance of the term “myth” in opposing agendas, one cannot help but conclude that it becomes dangerously common and overused. The easy accessibility and devaluation of the word “myth” breaks the integrity of the sign itself (as a concept) just as in the case of particular myths. Liberal Russian journalists, clinging to their own “portrait” of Stalin, tend to dismiss the actual danger of Zyuganov and his party. Maksim Glikin, the head of the political section of the Vedomosti newspaper, claims that the Communist party does not stand a chance of regaining actual power precisely because their rhetoric is so old- fashioned: “Это взывает к чувствам бабушек, а молодежи и людям среднего возраста это все смешно.”185 (“This appeals only to the sentiments of old women, while youngsters and middle aged people find it funny.”) Glikin explains the regular success of the Communist party in Russian elections — they usually come in second — by them                                                                                                                 183  Ziuganov,  Stalin  i  Sovremennost’,  12.   184  Ibid,  24.   185  Maksim  Glikin,  Interview,  November  30th,  2011.     131   offering an alternative for opposition to the current regime. Glikin considers the party’s title (“Communist”) to be their biggest hindrance: according to him this word is too divorced from reality: “оно перпендикулярно сознанию, это символ чего-то несбыточного, какие-то фантазии старых, странных людей. Коммунизм – это абракадабра какая-то для современного сознания, примерно, как футуризм.”186 (“It’s perpendicular to consciousness, it’s a symbol of something unattainable, some fantasies of old, weird people. Communism is a sort of gibberish for contemporary consciousness, like futurism.”) If communism, like futurism, has become a vague, meaningless term of the past, whether political or literary, then the myth of Stalin must be decontextualized from Communism to retain its charm and relevance. The structure that has unmistakably realized this opportunity, is Putin’s military government. Manipulating the same moods as the KPRF the government swept aside the irrelevant Communist ideology and focused on Stalin’s persona in order to justify totalitarian rule. Glikin links this to Russian desperation and their ingrained belief that change can come only aggressively through revolution: Осталось дремучее, патерналистское сознание у массы людей, и для них Сталин – это спасение от произвола, от коррупции, нищеты, грязи, вымирания народа… они видят невероятно несправедливый мир, и не верят, что он может стать справедливым эволюционным путем. А Сталин – символ революционного, жестокого преобразования.187 We are left with an old-fashioned, paternalist consciousness of the masses, and for them Stalin is a salvation from arbitrariness, corruption, destitution, dirt and the dying out of the nation… They’re facing an incredibly unjust world, and they don’t believe that it could become just by an evolutionary way. And Stalin is the symol of a revolutionary,                                                                                                                 186  Glikin,  Interview.     187  Ibid.       132   unmerciful, tough reform. Indeed, Putin's first steps once in power included the rehabilitation of Stalin and of Soviet paraphernalia: the hymn, the emblem, and the red banner, decorated by the painfully familiar star. In this case, “Soviet” is not synonymous with “Communist”; it serves to elevate and exalt the Soviet as the Sovereign, verbally redirecting Russia to the imperial path. Zurab Zereteli's memorial board dedicated to the 55th anniversary of the “victory over fascism”, established in the Kremlin in 2000, features the names of 18 Russian heroes of the Great Patriotic War with the name of Stalin opening the list. In that same year, anniversary medals dedicated to the Potsdam conference were issued, featuring Stalin's portrait. While publically condemning Stalin's crimes, Putin has asserted him as a leading historical figure in Russia's past. The “portrait” of Stalin created by Putin’s regime has received its most attentive treatment in the work of Russian pseudo-historians and pseudo-sociologists. In the 2000s, books on Stalin flooded the market. The variety and diversity of the books is astonishing; it seems like no aspect of Stalin’s wide mythological significance is left uncommented. The way the titles are formulated makes Stalin seem like a hero of a series of detective books: “Stalin: the Lessons of Life and Work”, “Stalin and the Intelligentsia”, “Stalin and the Allies”, “Stalin and the Generals’ Plot”, “Stalin and the Achievements of the USSR” One can find a multitude of books on Stalin and the Great Patriotic War and even one book that somehow links Stalin to the Soviet Union’s space odyssey: “Stalin’s Cosmonauts”. Some of the titles are so confusing and mysterious (“Who Stood Behind Stalin?” “Ten Stalinist Blows.” “Triumph of the Generalissimo”, “Stalin: The Second Assassination”) that the detective genre comes to mind again. Indeed, most of the books   133   are written in a detective spirit: their intention is to uncover the true nature of Stalin’s deeds, to reveal the “truth” about Stalin. The books may be divided into two main categories: the pseudo-historical and the ornamentally literary. An example of the former is Stalin. How to get people to work? by Vladlen Sirotkin (published in 2004). The author is a historian and a professor of history who aims to proclaim the “truth” (which, according to him, has been long obvious to “simple people”) of Stalin being a great leader. Not so much concentrating on Stalin’s persona, the author describes and analyzes the advantages of Stalin’s system and the country’s “blossoming” under his rule. Criticizing Stalin for some of his “mistakes”, he employs many laudatory epithets in connection with his name, letting his admiration permeate into his dry, academic style. The afterword of the book, which touches upon Russia’s future, reveals Sirotkin to be a great supporter of Putin, positioning him as an exponent of the “Stalin-for Putin” offspring of the Stalin myth. A more complex sample is V.D. Kuznechevskii’s “Stalin. Mediocrity changed the world” (published in 2010). On one hand, the author — a philosopher and historian — discusses Stalin’s crimes (the annihilation of the Soviet elite, the “cleansing” of the population, and tragic blunders in the country’s infrastructure); on the other, the crimes are named “tragic mistakes”, and Stalin is credited with “victory over fascism” and the salvation of his people. Kuznechevskii artlessly names his inner reason for defining Stalin as a “complex figure”: “Коли Сталин был, как иногда пишут отечественные публицисты, “проклятием России”, тогда, выходит, наши отцы, матери и деды, да и многие из нас, прожили свою жизнь напрасно? Так ли это?”188 (“If Stalin were, as                                                                                                                 188  V.D.  Kuznechevskii,  Posredstvennost’  Izmenivshaia  Mir,  (Moscow:  Olma  Media  Grupp,  2010),  17.     134   our publicists claim, ‘Russia’s curse’, then our father, mothers and grandfathers, and many of us, have lived life in vain? Is it so?”) This mode of argumentation (which resonates with many of Kuznechevskii's compatriots) equates anti-Stalinist moods to antipatriotic ones. Therefore, the author sees Khrushchev's de-Stalinization efforts as degrading Russia's image in the eyes of the world and blames him in doing much damage to the country's reputation. Interestingly, in his attempt to justify Stalin, Kuznechevskii explains the terror through the Leader's need to adapt to the cruel system constructed by Lenin. Thus, when the need becomes relevant, Lenin may serve as a scapegoat for the rehabilitation of Stalin as opposed to the contrasting examples cited in the previous chapter. Despite being the constant victimizer and abuser, a myth can always suffer victimization and abuse in the hands of another myth. Other books in the rich selection of Staliniana combine pretentious pseudo- historicity with an array of literary devices. For instance, M. Akhmetov’s “Riddle of the Sphinx” (published in 2006) is written in the style of a modern saga, with elements of the hagiographic tale) Following Stalin’s journey from Soso to Generalissimo, the author idealizes (and fantasizes about) not only his achievements as a leader, but his childhood and revolutionary career. As a true saga, the book suggests an heir, thus guaranteeing the continuation of the tale: the last pages of the book lead us directly to the praise of Putin, and the concluding line names Vladimir Vladimirovich Stalin’s spiritual successor. “Hello, Stalin!” by Oleg and Olga Greig (published in 2005) presents Stalin as a tragic character, underappreciated and unjustly forgotten. This book is not only adorned by many anecdotal stories of Stalin which are somehow weaved into the “historical” texture), but is formatted in a fictional way, naming the chapters “stories”. Thus, not all   135   contemporary Stalin myth-makers are determined to present the myth as historical, objective reality; on the contrary, some unapologetically emphasize the fictional, mythological element of the renewed Stalin cult. A large proportion of contemporary Russian people demand a blatant, obvious mythology, one that is easily recognized and straightforward, and, therefore, easily usable. The demand is answered, and myth providers make sure that their compatriots are generously supplied with uncovered myths – impudent, cynical myths, which shamelessly manifest their fictional construction. Certain variations of the contemporary Stalin myth are completely unexpected in their fantastic paradoxicality. Such is the national cult of Stalin in his homeland in Gori, Georgia, which employs the image of Stalin in the context of a religious, not political identity. Apart from the pride in their compatriot (the Georgian “Napoleon”) and the utilization of the myth for tourist attraction purposes, the Georgians keep the flame of Stalin’s memory alive, since they consider him the savior of Orthodox Christianity in Eastern Europe. Maksim Glikin, who has written extensively on the Gori phenomenon, attempts to explain this utterly absurd case: “Сталин воспринимается не как гонитель христиан, а как спаситель христиан. Они опускают все гонения, которые были в 20- е-30-е и выходят к 40-м, когда Сталин стал реабилитировать христиан, сам участвовал в создании нового патриаршества, стал опираться и на православие (отчасти как контрпропаганда против немцев).”189 (“Stalin is perceived not as the persecutor of Christians, but as their savior. They let all persecutions of the 20s and 30s slide, and they focus on the 40s, which is when Stalin started rehabilitating Christians, participated in the creation of the new patriarchy and started leaning on Orthodoxy (in                                                                                                                 189  Glikin,  Interview.     136   part as counter-propaganda against the Germans.”) However, since most facts and testimonies are unable to sustain the myth of the Christian Stalin, the Gori mythmakers are forced to invent a “supporting myth”, an “explicatory myth” of their main mythological construct. Thus, they offer a new, legendary version, which explains Stalin's abandonment of the seminary. As the Gorian saying goes, on the eve of the final examinations, the holy fathers came to see Stalin to deliver a holy message: he should immediately quit the seminary and immerse himself in politics, since his mission was saving Orthodoxy. Naturally, the myth does not mention Stalin's connection to the persecution of Christians and the destruction of Christian symbols and relics under his rule; however, Stalin's persecution of Trotsky is evaluated as his opposition to “Jews and Bolsheviks”. The main “merit” of Stalin — the reconstruction of several temples and the resurrection of the patriarchate — is seen as the defense of Rus' not just from Hitlerism, but from Bolshevism. This unusual mythological variation testifies to the immense flexibility and adaptability of the contemporary “Stalin myth”: upon request, it can easily merge with any offered ideology. At the same time, this amazing adjustability is not of the same nature that defines the thoroughly abused, prostitute-myth of Lenin. The Stalin myth may be a servant of many masters, and yet it “breeds” not only through a ghostly replication and multiplication, but through the appearance of mythological progeny, such as the Gori legend. Its mythological margins are becoming wider; the Stalin myth feeds on popular demand and thrives. It is alive, scarily alive. Significant evidence of the myth’s exuberant life is to be found in its interest and relevance for the “reactionary” members of the young generation. The most recent,   137   scandalous example is the “Letter to Comrade Stalin” (“Pis’mo Tovarischu Stalinu”) written by the well-known 35-year-old writer Zakhar Prilepin in July 2012, and originally published in the retrograde nationalist newspaper “Zavtra”. Prilepin — a member of the Nationalist-Bolshevik party and (initially) an ideological follower of Eduard Limonov and Alexander Dugin — had been always known for his radical Slavophile stance, and criticism of both Putin’s regime and contemporary Russian reality. The letter is formatted as addressed on behalf of Stalin’s enemies in a “spontaneous” self-critical confession: Мы поселились в твоём социализме. Мы поделили страну созданную тобой. Мы заработали миллионы на заводах, построенных твоими рабами и твоими учёными. Мы обанкротили возведённые тобой предприятия, и увели полученные деньги за кордон, где построили себе дворцы […]190 We found a lodging in your socialism. We divided th country that you created. We made millions on factories built by your slaves and your scientists. We made enterprises created by you go bankrupt and took the acquired money abroad, where we've built palaces to ourselves [..] This construction allows Prilepin to portray Stalin’s representation as taking shape from the self-representation of those who hate him. The self-deprecating collective “we” that confesses to a pathological hatred of the mustached Leader helps to emphasize the victimization of the persecuted Stalin myth and increases the emotional charge of the letter. The mythological annihilation presented from the perspective of the supposed mythologists (the defiers of the myth) turns to its opposite, the perfect mythological resurrection. The demythologizers of the Stalin myth are accused, quite fairly, of simply being mythologizers of their own “portrait” of Stalin. Realizing the common roots of “positive” and “negative” mythology, Prilepin uses his knowledge of myth to his own advantage: “Чтоб избавиться от тебя, мы придумываем всё новые и новые истории в                                                                                                                 190  Prilepin,  Zakhar,  “Pis’mo  Tovarishchu  Stalinu,”  Svobodnaia  Pressa,  (2012):5-­‐6.       138   жанре альтернативной истории, в жанре мухлежа и шулерства, в жанре тупого вранья, в жанре восхитительной и подлой демагогии.”191 (“To rid of you, we make up more and more stories in the genre of alternative history, in the genre of cheating, in the genre of dumb lies, in the genre of ravishing and lame demagogy.”) The composition is concluded by the familiar patriotic, self-aggrandizing, identity-seeking discourse: Ты сделал Россию тем, чем она не была никогда – самой сильной страной на земном шаре. Ни одна империя за всю историю человечества никогда не была сильна так, как Россия при тебе. Кому всё это может понравиться? Мы очень стараемся и никак не сумеем растратить и пустить по ветру твое наследство, твоё имя, заменить светлую память о твоих великих свершениях - чёрной памятью о твоих, да, реальных, и, да, чудовищных преступлениях. Мы всем обязаны тебе. Будь ты проклят. Российская либеральная общественность. 192 You made Russia be what it never was – the strongest country on earth. No empire in human history has ever been so strong as Russia during your rule. Who would like that? We're making so much effort to waste away your legacy, your name, to replace the bright memory of your great deeds by a black memory of your actual and horrible crimes. We owe everything to you. Damn you. Russian liberal society. The ambiguous, mysterious signature “liberalnaya obshestvennost” has spurred a number of passionate public debates on the actual “addresser” of the letter, targeted by Prilepin. Certain details at the beginning of the letter unmistakably point to the Jewish identity of the undersigned: Ты сохранил жизнь нашему роду. Если бы не ты, наших дедов и прадедов передушили бы в газовых камерах, аккуратно расставленных от Бреста до Владивостока, и наш вопрос был бы окончательно решён. Ты положил в семь слоёв русских людей, чтоб спасти жизнь нашему семени…193                                                                                                                 191  Prilepin,  “Pis’mo”,  6.     192  Ibid,  6.   193  Prilepin,  “Pis’mo”,  6.       139   You saved the life of our race. If not for you, our grandfathers and great- grandfathers would be suffocated in gas chambers from Brest to Vladivostok, and our question would be ultimately answered. You made Russian people lie in the earth in seven layers to save the life of our seed… This realization puts everything in place: while Stalin’s image is seen through the identity of the mythical “authors” of the letter, their identity is simultaneously uncovered through their attitude towards the image of Stalin. Thus, Prilepin ingeniously solves the tension of the original sign of “Stalin”, making it function simultaneously as a signified and a signifier. It is precisely this quality of the letter, the illusion of the sign’s integrity, which constitutes its dangerous appeal. The journalist Yakov Shustov offers a different interpretation of the Prilepin case. In his essay “Usomnivshiisia Zakhar”, published on the Liberty website, Shustov treats Prilepin’s thesis as a symbolic construction, which represents a protest against the current regime. For Shustov, Prilepin merely reflects the current moods in modern Russian society: “Любой недовольный - это латентный сталинист. Любовь к товарищу Сталину сейчас - это знак ненависти к окружающей несправедливости.”194 (“Every dissatisfied person is a latent Stalinist. Nowadays the love of comrade Stalin is a sign of hatred towards the surrounding reality.”) According to Shustov, this new version of Stalinism (which appeals to a great number of young people) uses the Stalinist myth as a metaphor: “Сталинизм сегодня это "религия возмездия". Ни к реальному Сталину, ни к классическому, "молодогвардейскому", мифу про него, отношения не имеющий. Сталин в современной интерпретации - это "бог очистительной бури".                                                                                                                 194  Yakov  Shustov,  “Usomnivshiisia  Zakhar,”  In  Liberty  Website,  accessed  July  25,  2013:   Ruhttp://liberty.ru/Themes/Usomnivshijsya-Zahar     140   Бич Судьбы. Немезида с усами.”195 (“Today’s Stalinism is a ‘religion of requital’. It has nothing to do neither with the real Stalin nor with the classical myth on Stalin. Stalin in contemporary interpretation is the “God of a cleansing tempest”, the scourge of fate. A mustached Nemesis.”) This hypothesis offers another advantageous prospect for the Stalin myth, an alternative to the reconciliation of the tension between its functions. The employment of myth as metaphor — which is, by definition, linguistically mythological, —testifies to its new stage of development; within the new post-Soviet framework, the exhausted myth gains new life: participating in a larger mythological construction, it acquires a new symbolic function, which gives it the desired sense of purpose. In its afterlife, the myth of Stalin splits into a variety of mythologemes. It is as if the myth acquires a split personality. The demythologization of such a heterogeneous myth is doubly challenging: to make the attack effective and worthwhile, the target myth should be well defined, and that seems impossible as so many multiple variations of the Stalin myth not only coexist, but intermingle and often collate, forming practically impregnable constructions. At times, one can see a union between “negatively mythological” and “positively mythological” mythologemes, which draw their ideology from one camp and their aesthetical form from the other. Such is, for instance, the case of the Memorial – an organization fully dedicated to the demythologization of “Stalin”. Sergey Krivenko considers Memorial to be safe from lapsing into mythology, since the target is not the historical persona of Stalin, but “Stalinization” as a socio-political construct: “Сталин с нашей точки зрения – некая суть режима. Личностью Сталина пусть занимаются историки, а мы занимаемся конкретными преступлениями: что                                                                                                                 195  Shustov,  “Usomnivshiisia  Zakhar”.     141   сделал этот человек на своей должности.”196 (“From our point of view, Stalin is a certain essence of the regime. Let historians occupy themselves with Stalin’s persona, while we deal with concrete crimes: we investigate what this person had done on his post.”) Since the persona of Stalin is not negotiated within the frame of discussion, a large part of Memorial’s work is achieved through indirect, passive negation and the annihilation of the myth: for instance, Memorial strives to prevent the establishment of memorials to Stalin and struggles against the distribution of Stalin posters at May 9th parades. However, Memorial does not restrict itself to the physical prevention of the transmission of the unwanted mythologem (a relatively harmless tactic). One of their active campaigns of demythologization adopts the mythological discourse and aesthetics of “the enemy”. Perpetuated by the desire to fight the enemy on familiar grounds, Memorial falls prey to the symbolic apparatus of myth. In 2011 Memorial issued its own series of posters to be distributed before and during the May 9th parades, as an alternative to the Communist propaganda posters. The main goal was to break the firm mythological link between the image of Stalin and Russia’s victory in World War II. The poster consists of a short text and a relevant picture (on the bottom). The text is impartial and lacking in emotion, it presents nothing but dry facts. The posters methodically refer to the most problematic aspects of the myth of Stalin as responsible for victory in World War II. For instance: По вине Сталина свыше двух миллионов советских солдат и офицеров попали в плен уже в 1941 году. Сталинский приказ №270 от 16-го августа 1941 г. предписал лишать государственного пособия и помощи семьи красноармейев, “сдавшихся в плен”. После войны                                                                                                                 196  Krivenko,  Interview.       142   выжившие в плену попадали в фильтрационные лагеря НКВД, а затем многие – в ГУЛАГ.197 Because of Stalin, more than two millions Soviet soldiers and officers fell captive already in 1941. Stalin's order #270 from August 16, 1941 decreed to take governmental pensions and aid away from families of red army members who “fell into captivity”. After the war, the ones who survived the POW camps were placed in the NKVD filtration camps and then – many – in GULAG camps. Только в 1937-1938 гг. По исполнению приказов, утвержденных Сталиным и Политбюро, по ложным политическим обвинениям расстреляны более 700 тысяч человек. Подавляющее большинство из них – мужчины призывного возраста, которые могли бы в 1941 году защищать родину от агрессора. Only in 1937-1938, following the orders given by Stalin and the politbiuro, more than 700,000 people were shot to death because of false political accusations. A suppressing majority of those people were men of a drafting age, which coould have defended their homeland in 1941. Сталин не доверял собственной разведке, которая многократно сообщала о планах Гитлера и о сроках нападения Германии на СССР. Следствием этого недоверия стала трагедия первых месяцев войны. Stalin did not trust his own intelligence, which had repeatedly informed him of Hitler’s plans and on the predicted dates of Germany’s attack on the USSR. The tragedy of the first few months of war had been a direct consequence of this distrust. Several of the posters are textless, the image being self-sustainable, such as the photograph of Stalin and Ribbentrop shaking hands. At the same time, the visual format of the posters is based on the visual language of the mythmakers. United by a white print on a pitch-black background, all posters contain the silhouette of Stalin in the top left corner, enclosed in a bright orange square. Significantly, not only is this Stalin physically small, he is also blank, faceless, almost merging with the darkness of the background. This presence of Stalin’s silhouette on anti-                                                                                                                 197  Current  sample  et  seq.  -­‐  courtesy  of  the  Memorial.  Published  in  Moscow,  2011.       143   Stalinist propaganda inevitably invites a double reading: it can be the illustration of the demise of the myth, of its unsustainable and darkly vague value, or it can be the proof of the ever-presence of the “Stalin” myth, even as a black shadow, of the impossibility to do without it, ultimately to be rid of it. Another dangerously “playful” device is the red title of the posters, which states: “За Родину! Без Сталина!” (paraphrasing the famous “За родину! За Сталина!”). This seems to be — at first glance — an ingenious, shrewd tactic of abusing the language of the targeted discourse and filling it with a contrary meaning, and yet this sort of penetration and invasion is precisely the tactic of the myth, of subjection to mythology, and thus, at least in a formal sense, (but when myth is in question, it is precisely the form that dictates meaning). Memorial mythologists turn to be nothing but myth-makers. In general, the liberal, anti-Stalinist Russian circles tend to use imagery of Stalin blindly, ignoring the fact that this visual attack is one of the main tools of contemporary mythology. (For instance, one of the most shocking events of the past years has been the launching of buses with Stalin’s portrait on May 9th, 2011. Likewise, every book of the Staliniana literature features a full page portrait of Stalin on its cover). In a similar manner, the WCIOM website adorns its survey on Stalin’s growing popularity with two blatantly propagandistic pictures from an older epoch: Stalin at a parade and Stalin lifting a little girl in the air The audio-visual format treats Stalin’s image with even less caution: the numerous films, sitcoms and television programs dedicated to Stalin’s image make it popular amongst vast crowds of viewers. Due to Stalin’s 130th anniversary, 2009 was an especially fruitful year for televised public debates about the relevance of Stalin’s persona. The sensationalist talk   144   show NTVshniki also offered an episode dedicated to the grand event, named “Stalin s Nami”. The question, traditionally posed by the host Anton Hrekov at the beginning of the show – Is Stalin a Saint or a Butcher? – is proclaimed by him as the most controversial subject of contemporary Russian reality. The arguments between Stalin’s supporters and his denigrators were so stormy and at times violent that to conclude, Hrekov said that the two Russias represented at his show would never be united. Yet the remark of the popular TV host Tina Kandelaki sounds closer to the truth: while Stalin evokes such passions, she claims, he is most definitely alive Using a special voting device, 36% of the show’s live audience voted yes to the question “is Stalin with you?”, and this is hardly surprising. The show tried to present itself as objectively as possible, yet the imbalance and the myth-driven prejudice was clearly apparent. First of all, the phrase “Stalin s name” was repeated in the show as a question, yet in the title the question mark was absent: this question was, thus, preliminarily answered in the affirmative and became a statement. The show’s host, though presenting himself as a liberal, occasionally slipped to dangerously inclusive and unquestionable comments, such as: “Его хоть и вынесли из Мавзолея, но он, кажется, навеки поселился в душе каждого из нас.” Most importantly, the visual set-up of the show, alas, unambiguously bought into the mythical imagery. At the very beginning, a terrifying bronze Stalin head, pipe-in-mouth, turned around its axis, saying: “Let’s talk!”, reminding the audience of the statue of the Komandor from Pushkin’s Kamennyi Gost’ (The Stone Guest). The setting of the talk show — a huge round — showed a large portrait of Stalin with the “Stalin s nami”   145   inscription at the bottom – still as a statement, positively turned from a debate topic to a slogan. Just as in the case of the Stalinist photos that accompany WCIOM’s surveys, it is most often the liberal films and programs that create the most damage in their vehement attempt to create their own “portrait” of Stalin, to contribute to the general array and to add yet another mythologem to the broken mirror of the archi-myth. A prominent example would be the 2004 TV-series “Deti Arbata”, Andrey Eshpay’s cinematic adaptation of Anatoly Rybakov’s trilogy, filmed in sixteen episodes. The film follows the fates of the heroes — a group of former classmates who live on the Arbat — from 1937 to 1943, and we are simultaneously offered glimpses of the life of Stalin and his inner circle. The series, like the book, focuses on the horror of Stalin’s repressions, yet deals with historical facts unreliably and with a degree of unrealistic naiveté. When it appeared, it became one of the most popular and most watched Russian television serials. The success was easily explained by a dynamic plot and by famous actors invited to work on the project: it featured an excellent cast, which included Maksim Sukhanov in the role of Stalin. Sukhanov’s Stalin is a magnificently dual figure: he is both a homegrown, endearing Stalin -— a Stalin who is wrapped in a woolen scarf and is admirably amiable with his servants — and a devilish, shrewd, terrifyingly mighty Stalin at party meetings, an ever-present, all-knowing Stalin, a Voland-like Stalin who sees deep into the hearts of his enemies and rivals. Yet, due to the charisma of the actor, both “Stalins” are magnetically charming, so that a meaningful discrepancy is formed between the monstrous system and the alluring persona of its creator. Stalin’s constant presence and his unremitting surveillance of people’s lives is   146   emphasized by the abundance of portraits of Stalin. His portrait is present in all public spaces, as well as in private ones. However, it seems that for the director, this is not merely an accurate representation of the historical truth (one of the few observed), but a game with Stalinist imagery. Stalin’s portrait is almost another character in the movie: it becomes an active participant of a political fight between two sisters; it is the interlocutor of a woman whose son has been wrongly accused and arrested; and hung on a bedroom wall, it even supervises two young people during sexual intercourse. The frequent appearance of the portrait and the crucial role it plays are read not only as a commentary on the pervasive essence of the Stalin myth, but also as the director’s private obsession with the image of the Leader and, perhaps, an unconscious physicalized parallel to the contemporary Russian reality that maniacally reproduces Stalin’s “portraits”. The director attempts to target one “Stalin mythologem” by employing its variation; he is not demythologizing, but offering his own form of the myth instead. The same ill luck plagues another highly popular “Stalin” television series produced in 2004. This is another adaptation of a famous novel, this time Vasily Aksionov’s “Moskovskaia Saga”. In addition to its predictable historical inaccuracies and blunders, this series is made very unprofessionally, despite the presence of some star actors in the cast. The figure of Stalin is made to correspond to the style of amateurish melodrama: already in the first series he is shown as a dark creature, a sort of vampire whose hypnotic powers force a party member to forget his speech and faint. Ironically, one of the constantly returning images in the film — the protagonist endlessly circling on his motorcycle — may be symbolically illustrative of the director’s position in respect to the myth. The director, just like the novel’s author, Aksionov, also endlessly and   147   pointlessly circles around Stalin, obsessing over him, awkwardly attempting to decanonize him and yet reinventing him instead. The representation of Stalin on the Russian stage of the 2000s is similarly discomforting: each performance reflects on a different mythologem, and each great actor provides his own “portrait” of Stalin. The first symptomatic “Stalin play” staged in the 2000s is “The Flight of the Black Swallow” (Poliot Chiornoi Lastochki) written by the Georgian playwrights Inga Garuchava and Petr Khotianovsky (originally named “Stalin’s Overcoat”) and staged in Sovremennik by Vladimir Ageev. This theatrical phantasmagoria takes place on the last day of Stalin's life, March 1st, 1952, externalizing Stalin's last ghostly deathbed delirium, and imagining his regrets and torments. The female lead is a beautiful young woman, who plays Stalin's nurse and fiancée (later his wife), his conscience and, eventually, his Death. Apart from the development of their relationship, which presents Stalin as a man susceptible to love and sentimentality, the main event of the play is the dinner with the conspirators who plan to kill Stalin by poisoning his newly made overcoat. It is hard to understand whether this is a real event or the phantom of Stalin's enflamed, paranoid imagination, until we realize that the entire reality presented onstage is, in fact, a phantasmal, nightmarish implementation of Stalin's thoughts, fears and desires. This is a confession of a dying man; not the great tyrant (though that element is, doubtlessly present), but a simple man, powerless and pitiable as any dying man. The play overflows with quotes from Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Bulgakov and the New Testament, but it alludes primarily to “The Overcoat”198, symbolically representing Stalin as the quintessential malenkii chelovek (“little man”), a man worthy of                                                                                                                 198  The  overcoat  as  a  physical  object  and  as  a  topic  of  conversation  is  present  throughout  the  entire   performance.     148   empathy, if not sympathy. Naturally, Igor Kvasha, who plays the role of Stalin, helps to make the character at once more fascinating and humane. The play, however, insists on touching upon the mythological status of Stalin. Some of Stalin's own lines testify to the character's awareness of being persecuted by his own myth. Thus, Stalin-the-person is jealous of Stalin-the-myth, complaining to his beloved that it is “Stalin” she is in love with, not Soso. Realizing the vulnerability of his body due to such mythological potency, he is also reluctant to share the fate of Lenin, the fate of the ever watchful, guardian mummy: “И меня, и меня в музей, под стеклом – сделают чучело. Не хочу, не хочу лежать рядом с ним!” (“And I, I will also be sent to the museum, under the glass, to make a stuffed animal. I don’t want to lie next to him!”) The new overcoat made on Stalin's order is the exact copy of the old one, only it is poisoned. What is it, if not the mythological icon, the exact copy of the real person, only thoroughly and utterly corrupt? However, it is not Stalin who ends up wearing the poisoned overcoat intended for him: he tests it on the tailor, and the poor tailor dies: as always, it is such people who fall victim to poisonous myths. True, Stalin, as the “original” is also victimized by his own myth, but at the same time it is the myth, the immortal simulacrum, which grants him an afterlife. It is thanks to the eternal myth that Stalin can afford to exclaim: “Я – не тиран, не убийца, я- власть, а вы все – муравьи, мне некогда считать сколько хрустнуло под моим сапогом – плевать хотел! Жалкие людишки, мы никогда не умираем!” (“I’m not a tyrant, not a murderer, I’m the authorities, the power, and all of you are ants, I have no time to count how many of you I’ve squashed with my boot – I don’t’ give a damn! Pitiable people, we never die!”) In the final scene, both overcoats are present onstage, and when Stalin makes Beria wear   149   one of them, while covering himself with the other one, it is unclear which is which. Indeed, it is unimportant; the replicated myth mythologizes the original, and, hence, the two are identical not only in appearance, but in essence, and completely interchangeable. While offering a rather successful metaphor for the mythological process, the performance is culpable of adopting not one, but several of the Stalin mythologems. The pendulum constantly swings between polar representations of Stalin. In some instances he is certainly presented as a fiendish creature, the incarnation of the devil himself. The display of Stalin's darker side usually occurs straight after a superfluously sentimental moment, as if the playwrights and the director suddenly recall their intention. One such transition, for instance, is provided by the continuation of Stalin's most painful, intimate confession: the story of his birth. Stalin reveals to his new wife that his mother went through such suffering while giving birth to him, that she decided to have no more children, thus provoking the hatred of his father, who blamed him in the murder of his unborn brothers and sisters. He asks his wife whether she is an only child for the same reason — for 'killing' her brothers and sisters — and receives and unexpected answer: “Нет, нет, не я – их убил ты – и моих маму и папу тоже ты и миллионы братьев моих и сестер – тоже ты!”199 (“No, no not me, you’re the one who killed them – my mom and my dad and millions of my brothers and sisters – it wwas you who killed them!”) The lyrical tone of Stalin's confession is grotesquely interrupted by the priest (who had earlier married the couple) who orders Stalin: “Kайся, кайся, грехи твои велики, кайся перед Богом, монстр! Сатана, убийца!” (“Repent, repent, your sins are great, repent in front of God, you monster! Satan, murderer!”)                                                                                                                 199  Hereinafter:  DVD  of  the  show  “Poliot  Chiornoi  Lastochki”  staged  by  Vladimir  Ageev,  courtesy  of   the  Sovremennik  Theater.     150   At the same time, Stalin returns to the secret passion of his youth, Christianity. Not only does he wish to be wed in the Orthodox tradition and ask the priest to absolve his sins, but he even insists on christening the Jewish tailor who is the maker of his new overcoat. In developing this line, the play offers an overt parallel between Stalin and Christ. In fact, it is Stalin himself who unashamedly makes the comparison, while referring to the expected dinner with the conspirators as “tainaia vecheria”: Я им скажу: друзья мои, я вам накрыл стол полный яств. Ешьте, пейте, веселитесь, только не ешьте тело мое, не пейте кровь мою, я такой же человек как вы, я старый, пожалейте меня! За что – за хлеб- соль, за мою власть над людьми?.. […] Иисусу было проще – у него за столом один Иуда был, а у меня за столом – все Иуды. I will tell them: my friens, I've set my table for you, it's filled with delightful foods. Eat, drink, be merry, only don't eat my flesh, don't drink my blood, I'm a person just like you, I'm old, take mercy! For what – for my bread and salt, for my power over people.. […] It was easier for Jesus – he only had one Judas at his table, and at my table everyone are Judas. Thus, the play mixes the recently invented “Christian Stalin” mythologem and the old, “traditional” Stalin-as-Christ mythologem, reflecting the confused and chaotic contemporary perception of Stalin, which is produced from a number of adjacent and/or overflowing “Stalin myths”. By all accounts, one thing is clear: in either incarnation, Stalin is a supernatural being. Yet, for some mysterious reason, he constantly tries on the symbolic overcoat, the humble overcoat of poor Akaky Akakievich, as if belittling his greatness deliberately in order to earn forgiveness. The not unfamiliar Stalin-as-Satan mythologem is expanded in the play, acquiring a specific literary particularity, albeit a dual one. When the priest accuses Stalin of possessing a satanic nature, the wife screams: “A я его ведьма, ты обвенчал ведьму с сатаной!” (And I’m his witch, you’ve married a witch to Satan!”) The parallel with   151   Bulgakov's most famous novel is obvious: only in this version Margarita falls in love with a hybrid of Voland and Master (Stalin's poetic talent is emphasized regardless of his actual poetic gift). Stalin's Voland-like magical omnipotence is manifested at the feast, when he magnanimously promises to grant everyone's wishes. However the feast is suddenly broken by a news broadcast that announces Stalin's death. After his sentimental farewell toast, the wife says: “Tеперь нам пора идти. Отпусти их, Иосиф.” (It’s time to go now. Let them go, Iosif.”) The image of them leaving together on an after-death journey invokes again the ending of The Master and Margarita. Stalin's evident mortality makes him lose the status of Satan/Voland, yet he retains an affinity to the Master, which means that — in the eyes of the playwrights and director — he is ultimately forgiven. As we have seen, the play is not only successful at simultaneously evoking several different mythologems of Stalin; it blends and entangles them in such a fashion as to create an entire novel, “immune” mythology. Igor Kvasha is not the only aged famous actor who has shown a burning interest in the impersonation of Stalin. Quite a few Russian artists of the older generation are fascinated with the idea of representing Stalin onstage and on-screen. An example of such an immersion in Stalin’s role is the performance of Sergei Yurskii in his own staging of Ion Druzze’s “Vechernii Zvon” (originally called Uzhin s Tovarishchem Stalinym), published and first staged in 2004. The action takes place during Stalin’s dinner with Nadezhda, a young star of the Bolshoi Theater, while the main dramatic conflict is Nadezhda’s failure to satisfy Stalin with her singing performances. The reason for Nadezhda’s multiple failures to produce a sound is her terrified awe of Stalin. Many of Nadezhda’s remarks betray her unwilled deification of Stalin: as   152   she is conscious of this anti-communist profanity, she continuously apologizes for it, especially when the word “God” slips out of her mouth directly. Yet, she continues to make less direct, but quite obvious allusions to Stalin’s status as a deity. These are, for instance, Nadezhda’s exclamation - “Товарищ Сталин! Иосиф Виссарионович! Мы же воистину с вашим именем на устах ложимся и встаем”200 (“Comrade Stalin! Iosif Vissarinovich! We truly go to bed and awake with your name on our lips”), or the moment she hears Stalin’s voice while he is absent from the room and looks up. However, Nadezhda's feelings towards Stalin are complex: they reflect a combination of several traditional elements of the “Stalin myth”, representing the variations that are rooted in the national consciousness. Therefore, the worship of a deity is complemented by a teenage adoration of Stalin (“как весь комсомол, прямо без ума” – “like all of komsomol, crazy about you”)201 and by an all-unifying, spiritual amalgamation with the leader, reflected in the words of Dzambul Dzambaev’s song: “У нас ствол один”… “у нас корни одни”… “у нас соки одни” (“We have the same trunk”… “we have the same roots”… “we have the same juices”.) Another prominent motive in the play is the erotic one. Even though the sexual innuendo between Stalin and Nadezhda is never actualized, her singing for the Leader is a symbolic intercourse, or more precisely, a symbolic rape, as Stalin humiliates and torments her in the process, violating her soul. The imagery is rather bold: Stalin comments on Nadezhda’s orgasm at the height of her song, discusses her future pregnancy and the son that will be raised by the party. Yet again, this cruel and                                                                                                                 200  Ion  Druzze.  “Uzhin  s  Tovarischem  Stalinym,”  Sovremennaia  Dramaturgiya  1  (2004):  97.   201  Druzze,  “Uzhin…”,  96.     153   passionate treatment of Nadezhda (a woman who not-so-coincidentally bears the name of his deceased wife), as well as Nadezhda’s complex feelings of terror and consuming love, may be illustrative of Stalin’s relationship with the Soviet people. The erotic aspect of the people’s love of Stalin is not the only mythologem tackled by Yurskii. Considering Stalinism to be a construction, which existed even prior to the historical figure, he chooses to represent Stalin as the carrier of a certain ideology, rather than its embodiment. In an interview, Yursky insists on the importance of Stalin’s everyday, humane traits in the development of his image: “Это был именно человек, а не дьявол во плоти, как многие думают, или вампир, как другие говорят, или как гений, который всем дал счастье, как третьи говорят. Он был человек, у него болела нога, у него болела голова, у него были страхи.”202 (“It was a person, and not a devil - as many people think, or a vampire – as other people think, or a genius that gave everyone happiness – according to a third party.”) For Yurskii, this is a play about a man who just wants to have a most ordinary experience: to have a good meal in the company of a beautiful woman, listening to her divine singing. Yet, as we see from the play, Stalin's wish is not granted precisely because he cannot separate his real persona from his mythical persona: Nadezhda cannot even for a minute relax in the company of Stalin-the- human, she is too overwhelmed and overpowered by Stalin-the-myth. Yursky develops the already familiar concept of Stalin as a victim of Stalinism, i.e. of the Stalinist myth, which becomes the main feature of Yursii’s “portrait”. Altogether, Yurskii is not oblivious of the mythical side of every Stalin character.                                                                                                                 202  Sergei  Yurskii,  Interview,  December  2nd,  2011.     154   In working on his role, he is eager to demonstrate the importance of perception and preconceived mythologically-influenced notions. Stalin’s physical representation throughout the performance is constructed slowly and cautiously. At first, Yurskii appears as himself, neglecting any stage make up. Yet, from the first second of his appearance, there is something about him — in his tone, in his gestures, in his determination — which leaves no doubt: this is Stalin. When in the second act, Yurskii comes out made up like Stalin — adorned by a wig, wearing the familiar moustache — one cannot help wondering whether the absence of those items in the first act had been merely the result of the actor's forgetfulness. However, when the pipe appears in Stalin's hand a bit later, when his Georgian accent gradually grows stronger, it becomes clear that those are carefully calculated, premeditated steps of the director. The commentary of Yurski himself affirms this hypothesis: Я хотел, чтобы исчез этот момент похож-не похож. Ясно, что непохож. Идет борьба, но потом через 15 минут люди привыкают и забывают об этом. Потом когда я выхожу в гриме, для некоторых это шок и сбой – мы уже привыкли, нам не надо. …Если человек назван Сталиным, если он ведет себя, как Сталин – если логика его поведения для всех окружающих есть абсолютная логика, но в конце концов он может выглядеть и иначе…203 I want to eliminate the moment of 'looks alike – doesn't look alike'. It's obvious that he doesn't look alike. There's struggle, but then after 15 minutes people get used to it and forget all about it. Then when I walk out wearing stage make up, for some people it's a shock – we're already used to things as they are, we don't need it… If someone is named Stalin, if he acts like Stalin – if the logic of his behavior for everyone around is an absolute logic, in the end he can look differently… Yurskii plays with the audience, demonstrably implementing his main thought: the idea                                                                                                                 203  Yurskii,  Interview.     155   turns into a person, gaining physical form from the audience's belief. Thus, the character of Stalin that we see onstage is partially an object chosen to transmit an ideology, partially a semi-ghostly mythological construct, supported by the audience's suspense of disbelief and expectations. All that said, Yurskii is unable to fully disassociate himself from the fascination with the figure he considers extraordinary. True, Yurskii’s Stalin is a tyrannical, sadistic human being, a true capricious despot. However, the play offers plenty of comical, sentimental and philosophical situations and lines that reveal Stalin as an altogether humorous, witty, even brilliant individual. He is full of paradoxes: he expects servile obedience, and yet he hates it, as is shown by his furious reaction to Dzhambul Dzhambaev’s sycophantic song, finally performed by Nadezhda after many failed attempts. He bans the beautiful song “Vechernii zvon” as “decadent” and “unfit for Soviet people”, and yet he self-indulgently enjoys it. His soliloquies show him as a true connoisseur of art and a refined philosopher (which contrasts completely with several of his rude, vulgar remarks). Yurskii’s performance of Stalin, besides using the opportunities provided by the text, reveals his open admiration of the character he portrays. This is why Yurskii’s Stalin is convincingly frightening, and yet scarily charming; he is most definitively the most remarkable character in the play, and the most worthy of respect. The critics, of course, do not fail to notice: “Вечерний звон” - как безальтернативные советские выборы. Публика голосует за Сталина. Он единственный прилично сыгран, ему отданы несколько более или менее остроумных реплик. Занудный, конечно, тип, но все равно на три головы выше и в сто раз интереснее остальных. Кажется, главная проблема России - в том, что   156   Сталина окружали сплошные дураки. Бедный, бедный Коба…204 “Vechernii zvon” – as Soviet elections with no alternatives. The audience votes for Stalin. He’s the only one who is well performed, the only more or less witty remarks are given to him. He’s an annoying one, no doubt, but he’s still so much above everyone else and a hundred times more interesting. It appears as if though Russia’s main problem is that Koba was surrounded entirely by idiots. Poor, poor Koba… Surprisingly, Yurskii does not deny his problematic stance towards the figure of Stalin. Moreover, he insists on his redeeming qualities, justifying the dangerous potential that lies in his performance: “Он с детьми очень хорошо играл – ну что делать – играл, он любил песни, был сам музыкален, он очень много читал, он в этом похож на Наполеона. У него была терпение и энергия. Никто из нынешних вождей не находит времени столько читать, сколько читал Сталин.”205 (“He played a lot with children, he loved songs, he had musical talents himself, he was a voracious reader, in this way he’s a lot like Napoleon. He had patience and energy. No one of today’s leaders finds time to read as much as Stalin.”) Considering Yurskii’s generation, his passionate interest in Stalin is easily understood, and the actor himself nonchalantly reveals the reason: “Восемьнадцать лет моей молодой жизни прошли при Сталине. И он для меня, как для моих родителей, фигура определяющая жизнь. Так было – в плохую сторону, в хорошую сторону, в надежду, в ужас – во что угодно.”206 (“Eighteen years of my young life have passed during Stalin’s reign. And he’s a life-defining figure for both me and my parents. It’s always been like that – in a good sense, in a bad sense, in hope, in terror – in anything.”) Yurskii himself — as a person — seems to be a successful                                                                                                                 204  Elena  Yampolskaia,  “Zachem  Stalin  Sbril  Usy,”  Russkiy  Kurier  (January  13,  2005):  3.     205  Yursky,  Interview.     206  Yursky,  Interview.     157   representation of the Stalin myth, a more convincing and straightforward one than the Stalin of the show that he directed, even though for him the real interest lies not in directing, but in impersonating of Stalin, in the challenge of performing this great and complex role. Apparently, the performance does not fully quench Yursky's thirst, for in 2010 he plays the role of Stalin in a short) television film of four episodes directed by Irina Gedrovich, which focuses on the last three months of Stalin's life. Just as predicted by Korkia, “Stalin” as a sign becomes both attractive and loose, and many compete for the part, both literally and metaphorically. While Yursky directed the play in which he starred as Stalin, another famous Russian actor of the older generation, Valentin Gaft goes so far as to write a part for himself in his own “Stalin play”. This play, “Eshcho Odna Repetitsia s Orkestrom” (subtitled Son Gafta Rasskazannyi Viktiukom), directed by Roman Viktiuk, appeared on the stage of the Sovremennik theatre in February of 2009. This play in verse was played out by two main characters: Eduard Radzinskii (impersonated by Alexander Filipenko, a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction on Stalin who writes with the purpose of denouncing and dethroning his myth) and Stalin himself (impersonated by Gaft). When Radzinskii falls asleep, amidst his archival work, Stalin — the loyal hero of many of his novels and plays — pays him a visit. In this dream, which scarily echoes reality, Radzinskii’s historical memory brings to life a number of Stalin’s victims, from Zhukov to Akhmatova, who participate in an imaginary trial of Stalin. These characters, as well as some prominent contemporaries (such as Zhvanetskii), who also take part in the conversation, are all played out by Radzinskii, so it is logical to assume that their representations are filtered through and created by his own consciousness, as well as   158   through the consciousness of the author - Gaft). Even though the text207 describes Stalin as a small man in tarpaulin boots and the costume of a Generalissimo, Gaft walks onstage in casual sweater and jeans, wearing no make up. As in the previous plays we have examined, Stalin is represented as an intellectual construction, as an average conception of Stalin. In the same spirit, “Radzinskii” is not the portrait of the still-living writer, but another symbol, a generalized character: the typical representative of the intelligentsia, the active, eager demythologizer. In fact, the play's main topic is not the myth itself, but the hapless mythmaker, who creates a myth that is contrary to his intentions. Though much of the play is constructed like a trial on Stalin, it is sometimes unclear whether it is truly Stalin or Radzinskii who is the main defendant. The symbolic figure of “Radzinskii” is the epitome of the cowardly member of the intelligentsia, and he is clearly presented in a parodic light. Upon seeing the “ghost”, he immediately betrays himself, falling to the floor shaking and, mumbling When he finally forces himself to utter a sentence, it is an ingratiating one: “вы здесь во всех углах живете.” (“You live in every corner around here.”) “Stalin” immediately realizes the dual nature of his enemy's attitude toward him: “Сталин. Но честно мне скажи. Не трусь. / Меня ты, ненавидя, любишь? Эдик. Одно скажу – я вас боюсь.” (“Stalin. But tell me in all honesty, don't be afraid – while hating me, you love me? Edik. I'll say only one thing: I'm afraid of you. ”) This duality of feeling is meant to be addressed not only to Edik Radzinsky, but to the actor, Filipenko,                                                                                                                 207  Hereinafter:  Gaft,  Valentin.  “Escho  Odna  Repetitsia  s  Orkestrom”.  Maniuscript.  Courtesy  of  the   Sovremennik  Theater.       159   as well: “Вам нравится в моей быть власти. / Идя на сцену, как на плаху, / У вас глаза горят от счастья / И бешенный восторг от страха”. (“You like being in my power: going onstage like to a beheading, your eyes glimmer with happiness, and you experience intense thrill from terror.”) Since the writer Radzinskii does not perform onstage, this comment is addressed to his impersonator, and, perhaps, to the author-actor himself, the impersonator of Stalin. This very subtle meta-detail of Stalin's replica exceeds the textual plane by penetrating into the performative reality. “Stalin”, thus, almost becomes a phantom, inhabiting both actors equally: as a ghostly entity, which speaks through them as at a spiritual séance. Indeed, the blatant mockery of the intelligentsia’s love-hate relationship with Stalin symbolically suggests that his mythological ghosts inhabit the Russian people in quite a similar manner. The stage directions in the text of the play anticipate audience reactions at key moments. For instance, when Stalin’s humiliations of Edik acquire an exceptionally witty character, the audience are expected to clap. This is both Gaft’s trap and a check point: will the “people” support Stalin once again in his persecution of the weak, pitiable intelligentsia, will they buy into it so cheaply, won by a successful play on words?. Purposefully straining the audience, Gaft does not rely on them; waking from his nightmarish dream, Edik turns directly to the people in the hall, citing the famous final line from Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov”: “Hарод безмолвствует, безмолвствует народ.” (“The people are silent, silent are the people.”) The logical applause, which is supposed to follow this final line of the performance, is yet another trap, since it would represent consent to those last words. The audience — cast as the narod — is initially and inherently vulnerable, it has no means of protecting itself.   160   It is fair to say that the protagonist of the play (who is, after all, Edik and not Stalin) is treated with the same rigor and cruelty. It is Stalin himself who directly accuses Edik of getting too absorbed in his games, absorbed enough to allow Stalin to inhabit him. Radzinskii does not deny Stalin’s accusation; on the contrary, throughout the play, his self-consciousness becomes more demonstrably confused, as he begins to conflate himself with Stalin. For instance, talking on the phone with the imaginary “uncle Kolia”, he betrays his split mind: “Я говорю из Сталинграда. Я буду насмерть тут стоять.” (“I’m talking from Stalingrad. I will stand here till death.”) This unhappy author appears to be decidedly confused, trying to understand why his hero, the hated object of his life, has grown so much into him. In this sense, the character of Radzinskii has a lot in common with Denisov’s Professor, both being confused representatives of the intelligentsia, invaded by ghosts of Leaders. Edik simple-heartedly echoes this idea of cohabitation: “Я в нем теперь живу, / А он живет во мне.” (I live in him now, and he lives in me.”) Yet one must not forget that he is, after all, a representation: his schizophrenia is a symbol of national paranoia, a cycle of a consciousness, that tries to forget and yet cannot: “Он до сих пор не понял кто я, / Ведь я же просто дядя Коля, / Застрявший в этой страшной роли. / Узнать и мне пришла пора, / Что Сталин – черная дыра.” (‘He still didn’t realize who am I, for I’m simply uncle Kolia, stuck in this scary role, it’s due time for me to find out that Stalin is a black hole.”) Unfortunately, the play's structural devices are quite poor and unimaginative. Like Korkia, Gaft saturates the text with hidden citations and allusions to important figures in Russian 20th century culture (for instance Solzhenitsyn and Vysotskii), intermingling different temporal layers; like Korkia, he operates with familiar clichéd phrases and   161   slogans: “В Полютбюро одни прохиндеи, / Жить стало лучше и веселее. /Всех посажу, найду поновее, / Жить стало лучше и веселее.” (The Politbiuro is full of sly dogs, life becam better and more joyous. I’ll put everyone in jail, I’ll find some new ones, life became better and more joyous.”) Like Korkia, Gaft uses versification to initially create a playful situation. However, unlike Korkia, Gaft is too straightforward, he employs pre-prepared formulas, using nothing but the naked text: a helpless armory against any myth, and certainly against such a sophisticated, multi-faceted one. The insufficient irony, the artless skeleton of the play, the lack of exposure of the mythological tools – all of those make the attack on the hapless mythmakers far less convincing. Additionally, despite their demythologizing intentions, several of the fixed, stereotypical contemporary mythologems make their presence in the play, such as “Stalin-as-victor” (“Да-да, тот самый Сталин, Эдик, / Тот, кто привел страну к победе.” – “Yes, yes, that same very Stalin, Edik, the one who lead the country to its victory.”), “Stalin-as-devil” (“нет, вы – не Бог, вы – больше дьявол” – “no, you’re not a God, you’re more of a devil”), and “Stalin-as-Christian”, with a hint of “Stalin-as Christ” in Stalin’s final passionate address to God (“Я твой библейский сын, я твой Иосиф” – “I’m your biblical son, I’m your Iosif.”) These episodes are not ingrained in the play's texture, but are rather semi-conscious momentary slips, although it is precisely the careless, momentary nature of these “slips” that suggests how the mythologems have subsided in contemporary Russian thinking. Of course, all of the above “episodes” could be registered as belonging to the characters, i.e. as the subject of critique. Yet, this is, in fact, the most problematic aspect of the play: the consciousness of the characters is   162   conflated with the consciousness of the author and performer. If this is unavoidable regarding Radzinskii’s character, it is more than surprising regarding the character of Stalin himself. Moreover, the authorial voice is heard in many of Stalin's lines. For instance, the ghost of Akhmatova thanks Stalin for her pain and humiliation, since they resulted in her most outstanding poetry. Likewise, this “post-historical” Stalin changes his opinion of Shostakovich’s music, calling him a genius and announcing him to have earned recognition. Moreover, Gaft’s voice (the voice of an older man criticizing contemporary times and values) is explicitly heard in Stalin’s attack on modern Russia: “Одни животные рефлексы, / Вы погибаете в маразме, / Одни наркотики и сексы. / Что было тайной, / Стало грязью […] Свободой головы морочат, / Не знаю, в чем ее секрет. /Играет каждый, как он хочет,/ А вот оркестра – нет и нет.” (“Nothing but animal instincts, you’re perishing in your senility, nothing but drugs and sex, what used to be a wondrous secret turns into dirt […] You’re beguiled by freedom, I do not know its secret. Everyone plays as he wills, but the orchestra is missing.”) In fact, this inevitable identification grants Stalin the dangerous role of the author’s mouthpiece. This notion is strengthened by the fact that it is Stalin who judges the mythmaker Radzinsky; it is, thus, “Stalin” — the ultimate myth — who paradoxically becomes the arbiter of justice and the exposer of mythologies. The revelation of Gaft’s identification with Stalin offers a completely different way of interpreting the play’s ending. When the meek Edik asks Stalin to forgive him for his “false accusations” and promises to make amends (“Я все исправлю и перепишу” –   163   “I will correct everything, I will write it over”), it can be easily read not as the mockery of Edik, but as a legitimate demand and a fair promise The compromising situation in which Gaft thus puts his play is, unfortunately, expected. Gaft-the-author works to satisfy Gaft-the-actor. It is not accidental that Gaft chooses to impersonate Stalin, not Edik, the main protagonist; the fascination of an actor leans towards playing the strong role, the desirable role of the hated tyrant; indeed, in contemporary Russian theater it seems to have become like a “Hamlet” of sorts, the aspiration of every male actor. Perhaps, Gaft wanted to rid himself of the remnants of Stalin’s presence in him by venturing to approach the role, yet he achieves an opposite result by endowing Stalin with a significant part of his own personality. The critic Grigorii Zaslavskii does not fail to notice: “Вполне возможно, что Гафту думалось, будто он предупреждает об опасности, но получается, по-моему, наоборот. Сталин – крупнее всех прочих. Убедительнее. Сильнее. И – выше. В целом получается – и не очень смешно, и опасно.”208 (“Quite possibly, Gaft imagine to be warning of a danger, but the result is of an opposite kind. Stalin seems a bigger entity than everyone else. He's stronger, more convincing. And he's bigger. And this turns out both not very funny and dangerous.”) (One cannot help recalling Barthes: “Myth can reach everything, corrupt everything and even the fact of refusing oneself to it. So that the more the language-object resists it, the greater its final prostitution; whoever here resists completely yields completely.”209) The play on mythmakers falls right into the trap of the myth-in-question. The crimes-in- mythology that Gaft hangs upon Radzinsky apply just as well to himself. The Stalin myth proves its vitality once again by subjecting its persecutors to the curse of the                                                                                                                 208  Grigorii  Zaslavskii,  “Kak  Strashnyi  Son,”  Novaia  Gazeta  (02/02/2009):  8.     209  Roland  Barthes,  Mythologies,  (New  York:  Hill  &  Wang,  1972),  132.     164   mythological loop and making them repeat the very pattern that they are trying to break. About half a decade after “Poliot Chiornoi Lastochki”, Vladimir Ageev staged “The Girl and the Revolutionary” (Devushka i Revoliutsioner) written by Igor Simonov, yet another play about Stalin. This time the home of the performance is the young, rebellious Praktika Theater, very different from the reputable Sovremennik with its renowned actors. The story line offers a similarly clear contrast: if Ageev’s first performance describes the last day of Stalin life, the second one features young Koba on the eve of the Revolution in 1917. “The Girl and the Revolutionary” contains the usual clichés connected to the scenic representation of Stalin: human, lyrical scenes between Stalin and his fiancée Nadezhda, which show the Leader’s vulnerable side, a trite comical innuendo (for instance, Stalin’s obsessive need to talk of politics immediately after sexual intercourse), and the inevitable meta aspect —an appendage for almost every contemporary play on a historical figure— the main character’s self-oriented historiographical question on his role in future history: “Источники потом все как надо напишут. Кому нужна правда? Никому не нужна.”210 (“The sources will later write everything as it should be. Who needs truth? No one.”) Meanwhile, one characteristic of Stalin-the-revolutionary is constant: whenever he talks about the revolution, he becomes unexplainably violent. This shift to aggression can occur in any of the previously described states, no matter whether he is sentimental, comical or philosophizing. Koba’s distorted face, violent remarks and behavior come suddenly and unexpectedly, culminating with his frenzied dance that accompanies the                                                                                                                 210  Hereinafter:  the  recorded  performance  of  “The  Girl  and  the  Revolutionary”,  staged  by  Vladimir   Ageev.  Courtesy  of  the  Praktika  Theater.       165   maniacal speech on the “cleansing” of the Russian people. In an interview, Vladimir Ageev confirms that this demonic transformation is the main subject of the performance. For him, Stalin is a person like all others, who is ruined by his obsession with power: “Oн становится демоном, эта энергия в него входит, и из нормального человека он превращается на какие-то минуты в монстра, который уничтожит миллионы людей.”211 (“He becomes a demon, and this energy enters within him, from a normal human being he turns into a monster who will destroy millions of people.”) This is another attempt at separating Stalin and Stalinism, laying bare the destructive energies that drive the character’s thirst for power. Since the leading actor is not made up to look like Stalin, it is clear that Ageev’s “Stalin” is rather a construct, than the historical persona. Stalin's growing demonic side is mainly shown through his way of treating Nadya, which becomes more rude and unforgivable as the performance progresses. The first symptoms are vicious jokes: “Kак ебаться – она устала, а как про революцию – она всегда первая” (She’s too tired for fucking, but she’s the first to talk about the revolution”), but it soon develops into actual physical violence, as Koba grabs Nadya by her neck. Yet it is not the girl herself who is the object of the violence, as while holding her neck, Koba lustfully whispers: “Вот что народу нужно – крепкая мужская рука. Чуть-чуть больно, но больше приятно.” In fact, Nadezhda is the personification of the narod, of the Russian people, and young Stalin's passionate, hateful desire of her is symbolic of his treatment of his countrymen.                                                                                                                 211  Vladimir  Ageev,  Interview,  November  25,  2011.     166   The metaphorization of a country into a desirable and violated woman is usually characteristic of Orientalism or any similar process of “othering”. And, indeed, Koba's evaluation of the Russian people is far from being exultant. Even though he longs for the Revolution to take place, he is frightful of the outcome, since, as he remarks, “pусский бунт – бесмыссленный и беспощадный.” (“Russian rebellion – meaningless and merciless.”) Moreover, not only does he confess to Nadya his low opinion of the Russian people (“И вот с этим народом революцию делать. И вот этот народ эссеры считают движущей силой революции…”), he cannot hide his general contempt of the narod (“народ плетку понимает, да водку.” – “The people only know something about the whip and vodka.”) Whether he is talking of the people or of the CK, young Stalin singles himself out by referring to them as “they” not “we”, which is noticed and commented upon by Nadia. This constant “othering” of the Russian people, which classifies them as a dumb, controlled herd, is stretched further than the perception of Koba: it seems to express the opinion of the director. Ironically, and certainly not coincidentally, the association of Russia with a desirable woman is also reflective of a post-traumatic neo-Russian myth. The sociologist Lev Gudkov expands: “И, действительно, современные российские мифы больше всего похожи на инфантильные подростковые комплексы или сексуальные переживания. “России грозит опасность со стороны Запада, а мы никому не угрожаем.” “Запад стремится колонизировать Россию, расчленить ее, прибрать к своим рукам ее богатства.” (Чем это не образ девы, предмет грязного вожделения других мужчин).”212 (“Truly, contemporary Russian myths remind most of all infantile                                                                                                                 212  Lev  Gudkov,  “Mifologizatsia  Kompleksov  Natsionalnoi  Nepolnotsennosti,”  Vestnik   Obshestvennogo  Mnenia  6  (98)  (2008):  5.     167   puerile fixations or sexual disorders. “Russia faces danger from the West, while we don't threaten anyone.” “The West is aiming to colonize Russia, to dissect it and to take away its wealth.” (What is it if not the image of a damsel, an object of other men's dirty lust.)” Ageev slowly and surely draws parallels between two historical planes: the eve of the Revolution and Putin’s Russia. The observation that the masses are like clay and can be easily molded into a malleable, controlled state seems relevant to contemporary times and to Russia's recent troubles under Putin's militaristic regime. Indeed, once in a while the character of Stalin “leaves” the frame of his historical time period, taking a glimpse at contemporary reality; it concerns reflections on the narod in particular: “Дать народу свободу? А он его хочет? А его кто спрашивает? Народ – ребенок малый, власть – отец с матерью. Если ребенку свободу дать, он игрушки разбросает, горшок разольет, телевизор поломает – его воспитывать надо.” (“Giving the people freedom? Do they want it? And who asks them? The people are like children, the authorities – father and mother. If you give freedom to a child, he’ll throw his toys around, he’ll turn his potty over, he’ll break the TV, he should be brought up and educated.”) In another part of the performance, the mass-media is mentioned again: “Пишите диссертации, кино смотрите, устраиваете эти, ток-шоу”. (“You write dissertations, you watch movies, you do those – how d’you call them – talk shows”.) This time, Koba addresses the audience directly: their involvement in the show progresses together with the show’s growing allusions to contemporary Russia. It is with a definite purpose that the television is cited as the symbol of the 21st century: Ageev is determined to represent it as the main source of information and   168   communication, i.e. of mythological discourse. Eventually, it materializes onstage (not altogether symbolically, but directly): a huge screen falls down, featuring an excerpt from the “Stalin’s name” episode of the NTVshniki talk show, the particular selection is Nikita Mikhalkov’s self-forgetful praise of Stalin. Maintaining the narrative of the performance between two time planes, Ageev makes the character of Stalin aware of his compromised mythical status; thus, the “Stalin” construct becomes a comment on contemporary mythological tools. However, once again, “Stalin” here is not even a mythical construction, as he is in Korkia's play: he is a symbolic construction, a metaphor. In the course of the performance, the characters' speech and behavior come to echo the 2000s more and more, unmercifully hinting at Putin's Russia. At the very end of the performance, Stalin is dressed in jeans, and Nadezhda holds a laptop; Stalin is informed of the beginning of the Revolution by receiving a message on his cellphone. The background screen shows contemporary Moscow, while the young woman/Nadezhda calls a friend and complains to her about the condition of her husband: a journalist, who writes about contemporary political problems and who has been stricken by a mental illness and now imagines himself to be Stalin Thus, claims Ageev, politics, as the playground of power, is a most dangerous thing: merely by writing on it, one may become possessed with its demons. “Stalin” as an image, then, is not only a metaphor for dictatorship; he is a reflection of the “Stalin” that which inhabits the mind of contemporary Russians, a chaotic clump of thoughts and ideas, a fact which explains the character’s inconsistent and often confused behavior. One could say that this is another case of “negative mythology”, another “portrait” of the intelligentsia used to discredit the current   169   government (one of the contemporary mythologems, defined by Shustov). Yet, since “Stalin” is used as metaphor, the mythological properties of the construct lose their powers. Moreover, if the character of Koba is made out of solely contemporary — and somewhat irreconcilable— conceptions of Stalin, this creation of a new, absorbing, collective “melting pot” of the Stalin myths is, perhaps, the only way of elucidating its all-absorbing, motley nature.   170   PAVLIK MOROZOV AND THE ARTISTIC IMAGINATION The Joseph Beuys Theater production of “Pavlik My God”, written by a Russian “New Drama” author Nina Belenitskaia, recently received the grand-prix at the June 2011 Koliada Festival in Yekaterinburg. The play was written in 2006-2007 following extensive independent research conducted by Belenitskaya and the director Evgenii Grigoriev in 2006. “Pavlik My God” elegantly shifts between the real and the imaginary, the documentary and the fictional. The two characters of the play are Tania, a teenage girl growing up in the post-Soviet Russia, and Pavlik Morozov, the notorious213 youth from the distant Soviet past who has been turned into a mythological figure of a national scale. Pavlik’s fame has undergone considerable decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it is Tania who evokes him from non-being, seeing him as a kindred spirit. In Belenitskaia’s play, Pavlik Morozov’s story is presented through the personal, charged vision of Tania who finds similarities between his fate and her own. According to Pavlik’s own testimony, his denunciation is merely a response to the betrayal of his father who left the family for another village woman, the pretty Nina Amosova. This is where Tanya draws a parallel with her own personal story: her father, too, left the family for another woman and, what is more, has since severed all ties with his daughters. The nature of Pavlik’s existence within the space of the play is ambiguous: he may be a shadow of the past, a ghost, summoned by Tania’s aching psyche, or a real flesh and                                                                                                                 213  The  thirteen-­‐  year-­‐old  Pavlik  Morozov  denounced  his  father  to  the  authorities  in  the  Stalinist   Russia  of  the  early  1930s  and  was  subsequently  killed  by  his  own  grandfather  –  only  to  become  an   exemplary  Soviet  symbol  of  child  martyrdom.     171   blood boy, a contemporary who is in love with Tania and pretends to be Pavlik to cure her of her grief and win her graces214. Whichever interpretation one prefers — the magical or the realistic — it is clear that Tania is keen on following Pavlik’s example: Папа, ты слышал, я тебя больше не люблю – это раз. И я предам тебя – это два. Я напишу на тебя донос – это два с половиной. Или восемь лет с конфискацией. Как ты хочешь? Теперь Павлик Морозов – мой бог. […] Павлик – бог детей, преданных родителями.215 Dad, did you hear me: I don’t love you anymore – this is number one. And I will betray you – this is number two. I’ll write a denunciation on you – this is number two and a half. Or eight years with confiscation of property. Which one do you prefer? Pavlik Morozov is now my God. Pavlik is the God of children betrayed by their parents. Whilst at first glance the play seems merely a personal interpretation of a once popular national myth, the author’s deliberate mention of the genre on the title page indicates that it is not so. “Pavlik My God” is labeled by the author not as a drama (let alone melodrama), or even as a comedy, but as a “pioneer concert-performance”. The specificity and eccentricity of this genre is justified throughout the entire play by constant quotations of authentic documentation216 as well as excerpts from an entire array of Soviet variations of the “Pavlik saga”: poems, pioneer songs, opera libretto and even chastushki. The revival and performance of Pavlik’s real and artistically interpreted past brings this text (which resembles a Russian doll) to an entirely different level. This witty, critical and culturally rich play not only undoes the mythological knot of Pavlik’s many images and challenges the myth’s status in Soviet history, but suggests an overall examination of historical iconization, providing an extended commentary on the process of myth-making.                                                                                                                 214  This  line  has  been  chosen  by  Marat  Gatzalov  in  directing  the  stage  reading  of  the  play  for  the  Yale   Drama  School  Cabaret  in  November,  2010.   215  Nina  Belenitskaia,  Pavlik  My  God  (Personal  Arhive),  3.     216  For  instance,  the  official  report  of  Pavlik  Morozov’s  death.     172   The controversial, self-contradictory myth of Pavlik Morozov has always evoked interest and a desire to unravel the mystery, and various attempts had already been made to reveal the factual “truth” of the myth, while demonstrating the process of the myth’s development and its acquisition of layers. Prior to the discussion of Belenitskaya’s play, it is first necessary to present an overview and analysis of the two most prominent non- fiction books that deal with the myth-in-question, Yuri Druzhnikov’s “Informer 001: The Myth of Pavlik Morozov” and Catriona Kelly’s “Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero.” Both of these books are significant in their aim to provide historical, documentalized research, which would provide material to serve as a counter-myth. Druzhnikov’s book, published in 1997, features descriptions and conclusions of independent research conducted by the author in the Khrushchev era. Already in the preface the author claims to have found “contradictions regarding every fact,”217 and thus lets the reader know that his goal is to turn the legend of “Pavlik” upside down, to destroy it piece by piece by revealing a multitude of shocking, eye-opening facts. This is indeed what Druzhnikov does — methodically and consistently — throughout the entire book. One of the biggest grey areas brought to light and questioned by Druzhnikov is Pavlik’s status as a pioneer. Druzhnikov claims that the discrepancies in evidence and contradictions as to when and where Pavlik joined the pioneers make the entire fact questionable. Thus, one of the cornerstones of the myth is shaken, as the presentation of Pavlik as the pioneer ideal has traditionally been one of the main emphases of both the Soviet propaganda and the extensive Pavlik literature.                                                                                                                 217  Yuri  Druzhnikov,  Informer  001:  The  Myth  of  Pavlik  Morozov  (New  Brunswick  &  London:   Transaction  Publishers,  1997),  VII.  Henceforth  cited  as:  Druzhnikov,  Informer  001,  followed  by  page   number.     173   Another major subject of Druzhnikov’s inquiry and attention is the trial: testimonies of witnesses seem to contain mistakes and contradictions; moreover, according to Druzhnikov’s deconstructive logical analysis of the events, it seems that Pavlik’s alleged murderers and their accomplices are, if not completely innocent, then accused without proof of guilt. Druzhnikov avoids directly accusing the OGPU218 of Pavlik’s murder for the sake of the legend’s creation, yet he implies this as a likely probability. In any case, he claims that even if the boy’s murder had been indeed committed by his relatives, the OGPU still holds indirect responsibility for deliberately inciting and provoking their vengeance, in line with the tactics and possibilities of the Soviet apparatus for “forced history creation”. A few more (minor) elements of the “Pavlik legend” are also contested and negated. For instance, Druzhnikov hurries to destroy the polished, idealized image of Pavlik presented by the Soviet media. Judging from the testimony he has managed to collect from Pavlik’s living contemporaries, the author portrays Pavlik as “a child from a dysfunctional family who displayed signs of mental retardation.”219 This new outlook is important not only because it liquidates some of Pavlik’s glow. The “dysfunctionality” of Pavlik’s family has a direct relationship to the key element of the Pavlik story: the denunciation. Druzhnikov, together with Pavlik’s classmate Prokopenko, believes that it is the father’s desertion of the family that led to Pavlik’s action: “The real reason behind his denunciation was the burning jealousy of an abandoned woman determined to take revenge on the husband who had rejected her”.220 Naturally, the change in motif makes                                                                                                                 218  State  Political  Directorate  or  the  Secret  Police  in  the  Soviet  Union.   219  Druzhnikov,  Informer  001,  115.   220  Ibid,  31.     174   Pavlik’s denunciation appear under an utterly different light: it is no longer the ardent loyalty of a young pioneer to the Soviet regime. However, Druzhnikov’s main emphasis is not on the wretchedness of Pavlik, but on the impossibility of matching the real boy with his fictionalized alter ego. Druzhnikov’s “real Pavlik” is simply too obscure and plain, hidden under a cloud of mystery and false notions about his persona. In the end, Pavlik does not even have a face: Pavlik’s portraits given in encyclopedias and newspapers are all falsified, so in the end nobody knows what the real Pavlik looked like. This vague foundation is like a clear sheet of paper — anything could be written on it; hence, “the real boy disappeared more and more into fictional images.”221 Thus, Druzhnikov illustrates how reality is created by resorting to the myth (the reversal of the traditional conception, in which myth vampirically draws on reality). Pavlik’s confused classmates who blend the newspaper version of events with their own memories. One of them even goes so far as to say to the interviewer: “I will tell how it was, but you yourself add what is needed.”222 The villagers seem to have altered their memories to fit the official version, a fact that provides an ideal embodiment of the Foucauldian theory of the dominant discourse, which subsumes the personal. Despite its constant reference to documents and the evidence of survivors, it is rather difficult to describe Druzhnikov’s book as documentary and objective. (In general, it would be wrong to consider documentation opposed to myth-making; as Beumers and Lipovetsky notice, the doctrine of ‘literature of fact’ proclaimed and developed by LEF                                                                                                                 221  Druzhnikov,  Informer  001,  121.   222  Ibid,  IX.     175   lay at the basis of socialist realism.”223) This impression is created due to the tactics used by Druzhnikov in his argumentation, the overall construction of the book and several elements of style. First, the book is constructed as a detective novel: every chapter ends with newly found intriguing details and unanswered questions, which entice the reader to continue reading. The narration attempts to present a seemingly naïve author who does not jump ahead but uncovers the shocking facts together with the reader, which builds up tension and adds to the emotional intensity of the reading experience. In addition, Druzhnikov openly applies the deductive research methods of Sherlock Holmes224. Striving for the restoration of truth, Druzhnikov suggests facts that counter the official version; and yet he follows the same narrative pattern, arranging his book as a fictionalized account. He does not only break the plot in the most intense moments for the sake of dramatic effect, but unites all people involved at the events in Gerasimovka under the title “a list of characters”. Further “slips” are scattered throughout the book: the “live drama” is staged in Gerasimovka by the agents of the OGPU, the trial represents “the performance that initiated the worldwide fame of Pavlik Morozov,”225 referring to the performative quality of Soviet trials. The insistence of the performative lexicon together with theatrical elements in the organization of the book make Druzhnikov’s account seem as fictional as the myth it aims to decrown. Catriona Kelly’s critique of Druzhnikov, which takes a significant place in her own book (published a decade later) is constructed precisely on that premise. Kelly’s exploration of the myth is based on yet another research odyssey, conducted previously in                                                                                                                 223  Birgit  Beumers  and  Mark  Lipovetsky,  Performing  Violence:  Literary  and  Theatrical  Experiments  of   New  Russian  Drama  (Bristol:  Intellect,  2009),  54.   224  The  most  famous  British  detective  who  has  been  extensively  popular  in  the  Soviet  Union  of  the   70s  and  80s;  mostly  known  for  its  “deductive  method”  applied  to  solving  crimes.   225  Druzhnikov,  Informer  001,  11.     176   post-Soviet times. The peculiarity of this journey is in its double nature: however hard she tries, Kelly cannot walk a brand new path. Her journey inevitably keeps referring to the one already undertaken by Druzhnikov. Perhaps, it is the desire for an independent experience, a wish to be rid of this obtrusive “ghost” that makes Kelly so insistent on proving Druzhnikov wrong. She establishes her own line and narration upon the negation of her predecessor’s outlook and style. Kelly disagrees with Druzhnikov on a number of points. Firstly, even though Kelly agrees that the people accused in Pavlik’s murder did not receive fair trial, she finds his theory of the OGPU participation lacking in firm proof and far too tenuous, if not paranoid. Secondly, she claims that while Pavlik’s court evidence against his father is recorded in the protocol, the fact of the denunciation — whether oral or written — remains unproven through the absolute absence of documentation. While Druzhnikov is looking for alternate motives of the denunciation, he never considers the simple possibility of an absence of a denunciation. This possibility shakes one of the legend’s main factual and ideological foundations. Moreover, according to Kelly226, the denunciation motif turns out to be an embarrassment in the longer term and evoked more ambiguous attitudes than one may think. This was especially the case in the Post-Stalin era, when betrayal of an authority figure is interpreted as an act of youth rebellion.227 Over time, Pavlik’s ideal virtues as a student and pioneer were emphasized over his role of the informer, which was softened and not even always mentioned, demonstrating how a myth may evolve to forget its origins.                                                                                                                 226  Based  on  her  numerous  interviews  regarding  the  true  attitudes  towards  Pavlik  Morozov.   227  Catriona  Kelly,  Comrade  Pavlik:  The  Rise  and  Fall  of  a  Soviet  Boy  Hero  (London:  Granta  Books,   2005),  206.     177   Kelly blames Druzhnikov’s “blunders” and inaccuracies on his ahistorical approach. She immediately places this phenomenon within the frame of the Khrushchev Era, which she considers to be the definitive source for Druzhnikov’s ideas. In her opinion, the main problem with investigations performed during Khrushchev’s time was the lack of access to archives. The limited availability of official sources, and the absence of any other alternative, puts Druzhnikov in a vicious circle: his book “questions the veracity of official sources — perfectly reasonably — yet regularly refers to them in order to cement an argument.”228 Kelly goes even further placing not only the book, but the author himself within a particular socio-historical frame: she views him merely as a product of his time. Kelly notices an agenda provoked by the Thaw Period in Druzhnikov’s work, classifying it as a rebellion against the established party line, a desire to expose the “actual” course of events. Only — in Kelly’s opinion — Druzhnikov has surrendered to the opposite extreme: wishing to go against the acknowledged facts, he contradicts the official version in every respect– often not relying on either fact or common sense, guided solely by the desire of contradiction. Kelly sums up her critical analysis stating that Druzhnikov’s version of Pavlik is “as much a product of myth-making as the official legends about the boy.”229 In her preface — long before her discussion of Druzhnikov’s case — Catriona Kelly states one of the key tenets of her book: “The Morozov legend was created to represent Soviet society as it wanted to show itself and to see itself”.230 The validity of this argument regarding the creation phase of the myth is evident. Katerina Clark (in her                                                                                                                 228  Kelly,  Comrade  Pavlik,  233.   229  Ibid,  247.   230  Ibid,  XXXII.     178   book “The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual”) points to the thirties as the time when the Stalinist myth of the “Great Family” was born. Citizens were urged to replace their familial sentiments by sense of political kinship: “rejection of corrupt blood-ties in favor of the higher-order bonds of political community.”231 The utilization of familial metaphors in the Soviet Union is reminiscent of another book, The Family Romance of the French Revolution by Lynn Hunt. Relying on the Freudian notion of “the family romance” (an individual tendency to define one’s place in the social order resorting to familial terms), Hunt applies it to the French Revolution, which disrupted the patriarchal model of authority, inspiring the search of an orphaned society for a new “father” model. This preoccupation engendered a number of novels and plays about children, specifically on orphans who strive to become useful citizens despite a tainted family history. Post-revolutionary Russia uses the same familial metaphor to help organizing the new political experience. Here, too, the murder of the father figure (the tsar) led to a search for such substitutes. Pavlik embodied the perfect example of the spiritually abandoned child who sacrifices his “corrupt” father for the sake of a better one (the Soviet regime impersonated by either Lenin or Stalin). “Pavlik” became the clearest symbol of an orphaned culture searching for new foundations. This is well illustrated in literature on Pavlik that appeared under Stalin’s reign. For instance, in Shchipachyov’s poema, Pavlik’s denunciation is absent, not in order to slide over this fact, but to increase the dramatic tension of the moment when Pavlik is summoned as a witness by the court. During the trial, as Pavlik dramatically rejects his father pronouncing him to be unworthy of the word, the author digresses from the action                                                                                                                 231  Katerina  Clark,  The  Soviet  Novel:  History  as  Ritual  (Chicago:  The  University  of  Chicago  Press,   1981),  115.     179   to mention Stalin as the “father of nations” (one of the most popular versions of Stalin’s iconic image, discussed in the previous chapter). The message of this instant displacement cannot be any clearer: a true communist holds Stalin as his true father figure, preferring his image to any ties of kinship. In Rumiantsev’s play about Pavlik we can see the double mechanism of incitement at work: a scene preceding Pavlik’s denunciation features Zimin, the head of Tavda’s raikom232, telling the young pioneers the educational tale of Kolia Riabov who informed on his own brother. This particular Pavlik is an ordinary boy who becomes heroic by following an example. just as any of Rumiantsev’s young readers could do. The play is thus an intelligently programmed brochure that calls for a particular action. It seems that the ability of a myth to deal with consumer needs and demands only grows over time. During the era of Gorbachev, it almost seemed that the Pavlik myth would not survive Perestroika: angry citizens toppled several of Pavlik’s monuments, those utterly fictional and mythological representations based on unauthentic photo images. It looked as though the physical destruction of a myth’s most profanely popular symbol, the erasure of its reproduced physicalized signifiers, would finally deliver the myth into oblivion, yet in the 90s, the Pavlik myth reappeared, reanimated, yet unchanged in its skill of adaptation. Svetlana Boym mentions an article in a 90s periodical that revealed documentary evidence about the conflict in Pavlik’s family. This piece of information, which transformed the myth into a dramatic story of romantic passion gone astray (and completely lacking in Soviet morale), was not accidentally interwoven with this specific                                                                                                                 232  The  Communist  Party  Organization  cell  at  a  district  level.     180   historical moment. As Boym rightfully concludes, calling Pavlik the oedipal myth par excellence: “Ironically, the piece in Ogoniok is as timely and mythological as was the legend of the young pioneer, since in the 1990s the mythology of private life is more important than that of collectivity.”233 If we agree that Kelly’s formula is applicable to all possible incarnations of the myth (which means it transcends Soviet space), we might begin wondering whether her own book is indeed a lucky exception. One cannot help the temptation of placing Kelly within her own thesis. While admitting that obtaining the “truth” about Pavlik Morozov’s story is now impossible, she allows categorical statements that defy the notion of objectivity and are not sufficiently supported by evidence. For instance, the convincing account of the decline of Pavlik’s fame after World War II is mostly based on conversations and interviews with individuals; there is no proof, however, that the interviewees represent all social layers of the population or that their number is sufficient to serve as statistical information instead of being merely a personal opinion of a selected group. One blunder that Kelly certainly makes regards her dismissal of Pavlik’s present role. At the very end of her book, Kelly writes about Pavlik’s grave, which used to be filled with letters children wrote to their idol and now contains only dry leaves. As supporting proof Kelly inserts a picture, however, it is not of Pavlik’s grave, but that of his brother234. While Kelly’s picture is from 2003, Nina Belenitskaia purports to have seen many notes on Pavlik’s grave during her research trip in 2006, just three years later. Thus, even though many contemporary youths may indeed be oblivious to Pavlik’s                                                                                                                 233  Svetlana  Boym,  Common  Places:  Mythologies  of  Everyday  Life  in  Russia  (Cambridge:  Harvard   University  Press,  1994),  92.   234  Pavlik’s  younger  brother  Fedya  was  murdered  together  with  him  even  though  he  did  not  play  a   role  in  the  denunciation.       181   existence, his birth place Tavda still remembers him: he is not as utterly forgotten as Kelly claims. By suggesting that the murder of Pavlik was a product of a community horribly damaged by three years of forced collectivization, Kelly, in her own way, arranges facts and documents in a design that supports her argument. If one were to repeat Kelly’s dismissal of Druzhnikov, it would be possible to say that Kelly is also a product of her time and exhibits the late 90s-2000s historiographical approach and obsession with investigating the unacknowledged outcomes and impacts of Stalinist crimes. Kelly blames Druzhnikov for his ahistorical approach, yet it is precisely the attempt to be historical that proves Kelly’s downfall. Basing a large part of her argument on contradicting Druzhnikov, Kelly follows his investigational journey, which inevitably follows the path of the official narrative. While offering different facts and formulae, both Druzhnikov and Kelly construct their arguments whilst leaving the narrative mode of Soviet history intact and integral; mirroring the course that is suggests, they legitimize and restore the officially proposed line of mythologization. At first glance, it seems that the pathological adaptability of the Pavlik Morozov myth to different (and even opposite) agendas places it in the same category as the Lenin myth, and, in fact, just like the Lenin myth, the Pavlik myth becomes first its own signifier and then a signifier for other larger myths. However, the Pavlik myth differs both in its scale of iconicity — it is inferior to the Lenin myth in its degree of grandiosity and idolatry — and in its specifically nuanced characteristics. If the signifying function of the Lenin myth renders it exhausted, abused and prostituted, swallowed up by other myths, the meaning of the Pavlik myth is perceived rather as a reflection, a mirror-image   182   of societal needs. Consequently, in its “smokescreen” function, it is in a way closer to the Stalin myth, yet it has never in its history of existence been a signified. What is then the mechanism of this plastic flexibility? What is the cultural premise, on which the myth becomes so well integrated with different elements and periods? In her attempt to frame the myth within tradition and national history, Kelly traces the “child martyr” theme that stretches throughout Russian history: the child murders of Boris and Gleb, the murder of Tsarevich Dmitrii, the Beilis case of 1913, which was not only an anti-Semitic blood libel, but “also a trial of an alleged child murderer,”235 and, finally, the murder of the Romanov children by the revolutionaries. The myth of Pavlik is irresistibly attractive because it points to all of his predecessors and yet contains an element of power. Pavlik is the incarnation of the Jungian child-hero archetype, the archetype of a usual, but divine child: “It is a striking paradox that the ‘child’ is on the one hand delivered helpless into the power of terrible enemies and in continual danger of extinction, while on the other he possesses powers far exceeding those of ordinary humanity.”236 The myth of Pavlik is a cathartic version of the myth of the child martyr, at the same time as being the incarnation of the social model of the “orphaned child” The existing duality of a firm grounding in traditional mythology and a central position within the post-revolutionary peculiarity of a society-in-crisis makes the “Pavlik” myth so irresistible and flexible. Interestingly enough, Boris, Gleb and Dmitrii have been all added to the cannon of saints by the Russian Orthodox Church, which makes Pavlik a modern representative                                                                                                                 235  Kelly,  Comrade  Pavlik,  127.   236  Carl  Gustav  Jung,  The  Archetypes  and  the  Collective  Unconscious  (New  Jersey:  Princeton  University   Press,  1969),  170.     183   of the hagiographic genre, one that dominated Russian literature for several centuries.237 On the other hand, as Clark argues, sacrifice was a dominant value in the 19th century ethos of the intelligentsia. Martyrdom, as the supreme virtue of Stalinist aesthetics, has roots in the consciousnesses of both the people and the social elite. Clark writes: “Since heroic death is a true sign of heroic status, it is a rare socialist realist novel that fails to include either death or threat of death for the hero(s).”238 Thus, “Pavlik” is simply another novel written by the state. This is a performative novel, which features real people as characters, acted and reenacted. It thus represents a performative model, which sets in motion the mechanism of public confessions, surveillance, and real and mock trials. The performative aspect of Soviet society, its tendency to write and produce real life as novels and performances, was manifested first and foremost by the practice of mock trials, the model “agitation trials” initiated by the authorities after 1922. While first based on real show trials and carefully scripted, by the 30s the mock trials were improvised according to relatively loose outlines. As Elizabeth Wood writes, the educational show trials were often publicized as genuine legal proceedings and not their dramatizations.239 This deliberate mystification and the greater freedom brought by improvisation helped to blend the line between fiction and reality. Over time, Soviet culture became unhesitant in applying artistic guidelines to reality and vice versa. The question remains: who “wrote” the performative myth of Pavlik Morozov? Was it really created by the State? There are reasons to doubt this assumption: it is known that Stalin disliked the Pavlik figure and even walked out of Eisenstein’s movie about the                                                                                                                 237  Druzhnikov  too  relates  the  Pavlik  Morozov  myth  to  the  hagiographic  genre.   238  Clark,  The  Soviet  Novel,  180.   239  Elizabeth  A.  Wood,  Performing  Justice:  Agitation  Trials  in  Early  Soviet  Russia.  (Ithaca:  Cornell   University  Press,  2005),  7.       184   boy. If it was not created on the order of the authorities, – was it then a national creative process, a product of the masses? The cultural theoreticians John Fiske and Michel de Certeau have propagated a paradoxical theory about the creation of contemporary culture by consumers in an ongoing reproduction of the narrative object.240 This theory may be equally applied to the fate of an object within a mythological narrative; if (according to De Certeau) mythologization is nothing but a mode of discourse, then any object can become its victim. This applies not just to specific objects, but to complicated agglomerations of ideas and ideologies (including such archetypal formations as “Pavlik”.) Mythology devours everything, transgressing the boundaries between the written word and the physical world. However, the condition for this process is the great demand of the consuming masses, the desire of people to see a physicalization of their shared cultural unconsciousness: the needs of consumers have to be unified in an almost Jungian manner. Yet, even if we assume that the mechanism of consumer demand is possible in anti-capitalist Stalinist Russia, the evidence of such popular demand is lacking. Whenever social norms are produced as a text, they can only be proved to be a trend by a truly massive tendency. Yet, it seems that the alleged massive denunciations provoked by Pavlik’s example are as fictional as the myth itself. The historian Sheila Fitzpatrick writes: The intense publicity given to Pavlik Morozov denunciation might suggest that denunciation of one family member by another was commonplace in Stalin’s Russia, but the archives of the 1930s offer little support for this hypothesis. To be sure, there are individual cases of denunciation within                                                                                                                 240  The  exact  quote  is  cited  in  the  introduction  chapter.     185   the family. But in general this genre of denunciation is conspicuous in its absence.241 Furthermore, another historian, Robert Conquest, mentions only three additional children who are cited as denouncers of their parents: Pronya Kolibin, pioneer Sorokin from the North Caucasus and Kolia Shcheglov from the Pugachev district.242 (This is within a span of five years (1932-1937) in a huge country with a population of hundreds of millions.) Of course, that is not to deny the general trend of denunciations amongst adolescents who wrote calumnies copiously and freely in the hope of following Pavlik’s footsteps, however, even those seekers of fame had not been radical enough to write about their own kin, a fact that is soberly explained by the harsh fate that befell the families of “enemies of the people”: denouncing one’s parents was in no one’s best interest. All that being said, in his book about domestic, private life during Stalin’s repressions, the historian Orlando Figes writes: “At the height of the Pavlik Morozov cult in the 1930s, the true pioneer was almost expected to prove his worthiness by denouncing his true relatives.”243 Whether this statement is a disregard for the facts or just a careless generalization, it is evident that the Pavlik Morozov myth successfully bred a number of related myths, as insistent and convincing as their progenitor. If the Pavlik myth is not the result of a collective consumer production, how then did it come into being? At the end of his book, Druzhnikov provides the reader with a list of journalists and writers who have written about Pavlik Morozov; he titles it: “Creators                                                                                                                 241  Sheila  Fitzpatrick,  Tear  Off  the  Masks:  Identity  and  Imposture  in  Twentieth-­‐Century  Russia   (Princeton:  Princeton  University  Press,  2005),  221.   242  Robert  Conquest,  Harvest  of  Sorrow:  Soviet  Collectivization  and  the  Terror-­‐Famine  (New  York:   Oxford  University  Press,  1986),  295.   243  Orlando  Figes,  The  Whisperers:  Private  Life  in  Stalin’s  Russia  (London:  Allen  Lane,  2007),  129.       186   of the Myth of Pavlik Morozov.” In his treatment of the myth, Druzhnikov demonstrates how new details and meanings were gradually added to “garnish” the story, leading it farther and farther away from its origin, adding one mythological layer after another. Those who claim to be writing non-fiction — the journalists — happened to provide the largest contribution by not only fictionalizing their accounts, but by doing so in competition with each other, which resulted in a multiplication of official versions depending on the newspaper. When the first “myth creator”, the biographer Solomein, wrote “In the Kulaks’ Nest”, he adjusted and adapted the biographical elements as suited him. The nationally famous writer Maxim Gorky developed the story further: recognizing the potential in the Pavlik story, he did everything to raise awareness about it, inadvertently “commissioning” new literary works that were destined to ultimately move Pavlik’s persona into the fictional realm. Examples of Pavlik’s literary incarnations could be Rumiantsev’s play “Pesnia o Niom ne Umriot” (The Song about him will not Die) and Shchipachiov’s “Poema”. Rumiantsev’s version emphasizes the negative image of the “kulak”: not only is Pavlik’s father Trofim an embezzler and a cheat, but he is also an alcoholic. The devilry of Shchipachiov’s Trofim is even further developed: he is not only a drunkard, but a wife abuser.244 His denunciation is viewed not as an act of human weakness, but a deliberate sabotage: throughout the poem, Trofim openly criticizes the communist authorities to Pavlik. Pavlik, on the other hand, is described as “парнишка русоволосый” — a hidden allusion to Esenin’s Pastukh Petia — a simple, pure hearted Russian adolescent who is suffering from social injustice. Shchipachiov’s Pavlik is the empowered Petya, given                                                                                                                 244  This  contradicts  the  witness  testimonies  collected  by  Druzhnikov,  according  to  which  Trofim  was   a  decent  man,  liked  by  the  villagers  (unlike  his  wife).         187   agency and voice by the Revolution. Other than employing an emotionally effective catharsis, Shchipachiov places Pavlik within the tradition of Russian (national) poetic culture. In the epilogue Schipachiov states: “нету конца у песни”245, as if hinting at the endlessness of the myth’s future incarnations Kelly, too, emphasizes Gorky’s role in promoting Pavlik’s story, explaining it by his exceptional interest in the theme of childhood. (As a representative of both the cultural elite and the people, Gorky unmistakably relates the story to the old national archetype of the “child martyr”.) Even though Gorky plays a role in creating the myth physically (i.e. by writing about it), “Pavlik” could still be considered to be one of his fictional stories. It fits right alongside “Danko”246, the first hero of a new socialist mythology. (Incidentally, Pavlik is compared to Danko by Shchipachiov, and one of Kelly’s interviewees also makes this comparison.) What Pavlik and Danko have in common is the sacrificial nature of their deed; however, while Danko makes the choice of martyrdom, Pavlik is a martyr against his will. It is a certain combination of Danko and Pavlik that in turn inspires the subsequent heroes of Soviet children’s literature, such as Gaidar’s hero Mal’chish Kibal’chish who sacrifices his life for his country. The initiative to establish a monument for Pavlik was also provided by Gorky. Kelly places a picture of this monument on the last page of her book. Earlier she writes: “[As] history has demonstrated, the informers themselves are also victims.”247 It seems that for Kelly the monument is the ultimate, concluding stage of victimization. While different texts about Pavlik both complement and contradict each other, still existing in a                                                                                                                 245  Stepan  Shchipachev,  Pavlik  Morozov:  Poema  (Moscow:  Sovetskii  Pisatel’,  1950),  64.   246  A  short  story-­‐parable  in  which  the  main  character  tears  his  own  heart  from  his  chest  to  light  up   the  darkness  and  show  the  way  to  the  people  who  follow  him.     247  Kelly,  Comrade  Pavlik,  179.     188   dialogue, the complex text of Pavlik’s life becomes stiff and frozen in its physicalized manifestation; this brings to mind Vysotskii’s song “Pamiatnik”, where the stone copy of the deceased protagonist offends him by its dissimilarity and yet cannot be amended due to its fixed form. Opposites often paradoxically meet at a point in space, and the concrete opaqueness of a monument is equivalent to nothingness, emptiness. The thread of mythologized accounts, which culminates in a spatially materialized myth, thus eliminates Pavlik’s real existence. In his preface Druzhnikov suggests that “perhaps the boy never even existed and was just another of the idealized characters that make up Soviet literature?”248 Richard Stites, writing about Khrushchev’s 70s campaigns (modeled on those of the 30s), mentions Pavlik in a similar light: “[The young generation] were culturally represented as pioneers on a frontier with patriotic overtones and references to the great construction adventures of the 1930s and cult figures such as Pavlik Morozov and Pavel Korchagin.”249 It is important to note that yet again (as with Danko previously) Pavlik is mentioned alongside a fictional hero.250 All evidence points to “Pavlik” being not a consumer-created myth, but an artistic one. In another of Druzhnikov’s books — Russkie Mify (Russian Myths) — he examines several of the major Russian literary and biographical myths. One major section is devoted to Pushkin, Russia’s most famous poet, and the other, to Pavlik Morozov. In an interview at the end of the book, Druzhnikov states that Pavlik Morozov and Pushkin have a lot in common as victims of posthumous mystification. Interestingly,                                                                                                                 248  Druzhnikov,  Informer  001,  VIII.   249  Richard  Stites,  Russian  Popular  Culture:  Entertainment  and  Society  since  1900  (Cambridge:   Cambridge  University  Press,  1992),  144.   250  Pavel  Korchagin  is  the  protagonist  of  Ostrovsky’s  1930-­‐34  novel  How  Steel  Was  Tempered.     189   a (rather obscure) play by Vladlen Gavril’chik shows Pavlik, alongside Timur, rescuing Pushkin from his duel. In this fictional coexistence both Pavlik and Pushkin (unlike Timur) are robbed of their real identity. Curiously, the Pushkin myth has appeared thanks to the poetic creative fashion in the early twentieth century: the modernist artists of the Silver Age gave Pushkin and his age a central place in the system of cultural myths that was feeding their art.251 (Kharms commented on the iconic obsession with 19th century writers by making them grotesque characters in a recontextualized setting in his Sluchai.) Thus, both “Pavlik Morozov” and “Pushkin” are victims of artists, of a merciless creative fashioning. Appropriated by writers, crafted by covertly and overtly fictional means, the “Pavlik myth” is stoically invincible to a verbal weapon. The author wishing to expose a myth risks becoming a character himself, being pulled into the story (becoming, in his or her turn, a part of the story, a fictionalized artifact). To illustrate that phenomenon, shortly after the publication of Druzhnikov’s book, the newspaper “Vecherniy Kiev” claims that “Druzhnikov is himself an informer, for he has informed the readers about Pavlik Morozov.”252 By approaching a mythical structure closely, and determining the surreal, fictional status of Pavlik, the author is, too, reduced to a status of a mythological figure: he is sucked in by the myth. Belenitskaia’s play, “Pavlik My God”, features several problematic aspects. First of all, the play, based, as it is, on documental research, can be read as another version of events, another attempt to restore the “truth”, and therefore falls victim to the same                                                                                                                 251  Gasparov  explains  that  in  the  age  of  Russian  Modernism  the  concept  of  cultural  tradition  was   replaced  by  the  idea  of  cultural  myth  (with  Pushkin  and  his  age  occupying  a  central  place  in  this   system.)   252  Yuri  Druzhnikov,  Russkie  Mify  (Ekaterinburg:  Y-­‐Faktoriya,  2001),  609.     190   troubles as the previous accounts. Belenitskaya’s Pavlik (like Kelly’s) claims that he did not denounce his father; even though he was later forced to testify against him in the courtroom, the fact of a premeditated written denunciation never happened. In support of this testimony, Pavlik states that the document has not been found in the archives, even though it would have been in the State’s best interest to keep and cherish it if, indeed, it had existed. Pavlik has another sound logical argument to support him: ПАВЛИК. Кому доносить? ТАНЯ. Известно, кому. В сельсовет. ПАВЛИК. Железобетонная логика. А председатель сельсовета кто? Пауза. ТАНЯ. Твой отец… Ну, а если куда-нибудь по соседству? ПАВЛИК. До Тавды два дня ходу через лес. Мне 13 лет. На дворе 31- й год. Одинокая деревня в тайге. Кругом банды. Нашей учительнице вместо букваря выдали берданку. Ружье. Зимой –40, и нет полей. Просто – нет! Только лес. 253 PAVLIK. Who would I rat to? TANIA. It’s obvious – to the village local council. PAVLIK. That’s a very sound logic. And who’s the head of the village council? Pause. TANIA. Your father… Well, what about the neighboring villages? PAVLIK. It’s two days walking to Tavda – through the woods. I’m 13. It’s 1931. A lonely village in the Taiga. Roaming bands around. They gave our teacher a gun instead of an ABC book. It’s -40 in the winter, and there are no fields. Just none. Only woods. And yet, the voice of Pavlik’s character is not coupled with the authorial voice. The irony present in many of Pavlik’s remarks and often contradictory statements is used to mark this separation. Eventually, this particular Pavlik character rejects the claim to objectivity or truthfulness. After pulling Tania into his web of self-indulgent stories, he admits: “Реально было только две вещи: я родился. И меня убили в лесу, где мы с Федькой                                                                                                                 253  Belenitskaia,  Pavlik  My  God,  7.       191   собирали клюкву, чтоб на зиму варенье сварить.»254 The absolute — the slippery, dangerous, inevitably mythological truth — is no longer the aim. The extensive research undertaken by the playwright produces a realization of the futility of knowledge and, eventually, of its superfluity. The stream of colliding contradictions, versions and doubts evokes musings of fantasy; it leads to the creation of the play's imaginary space, in which the discussion of Pavlik's unfulfilled life, the possibilities and loves he missed, is more valid than the pursuit of authenticity and veracity. Another seemingly “dangerous” quality of the play is the personal take on it — the theme of a double betrayal. The situation repeats itself: a hurt teenager aspires to betray the father who was first to betray the family by leaving. This may appear as a dramatized version of Druzhnikov’s hypothesis about the importance of personal drama in Pavlik’s story. The denunciatory aspect of the story is pulled out of oblivion and made central again, offering what would seem to be a compulsive repetition of the myth’s core foundations; even if the alleged denunciation was only alleged, its non-existence contributes to the myth as much as its existence would. However, one must remember that “Pavlik” is a reflection: this is a play not about the lost historical persona of Pavlik Morozov, but about the construct of “Pavlik” through the eyes of Tania. This is the story of Tania, moderated through the image of Pavlik, and vice versa. Ironically, the possibility of denunciation for both Pavlik and Tania appears absurd for exactly the same reason. The potential receivers of their denunciation letters are guilty of just the same things as their fathers: taking bribes and avoiding taxation. Pavlik’s monologue about the corruption of the Soviet structure is, in fact, a comment                                                                                                                 254  Belenitskaia,  Pavlik  My  God,  6.     192   about the state of things in contemporary Russia. Belenitskaya does not blindly trigger the myth’s representative function: she consciously uses it, subjecting the myth to her own needs. Pavlik, as always, serves as a mirror that reflects contemporary reality.255 The play’s abundant documentation is present both in its paper publication (for instance, the official report of Pavlik’s death, pictures of his monument taken in 2006 during the research trip) and its staged version, which features documentary footage, previously taken in Gerasimovka, on six giant screens. The presence of documentation is considered an adornment, which provides not a defense of the myth, but a revelation of its fallibility. For instance, Belenitskaia uses the same picture Kelly presents in her book, but to make an opposite point and, referring to archival materials, Belenitskaia incorporates much of the documentation already sited by Druzhnikov, risking being caught within the narrative frame of his research journey. However, the documentation is completely transformed within the context of the performance. Belenitskaya’s documentary footage is revealed to be as conditional and theatrical as the rest of the set; parts of the footage are almost phantasmagorical. Present in Gerasimovka on the anniversary of Pavlik’s death, Belenitskaia had witnessed and recorded a public prayer on Pavlik conducted by a local pope and accompanied by a chorus of old, peasant-looking Russian women. Besides the affirmation of Pavlik’s placement within the martyr archetype (an unofficial canonization of sorts), the footage serves to create a feeling of surreal, occult happening. Belenitskaia remarks: “Они очень трепетно относятся к нему. У них по большому счету кроме Павлика ничего нет. Даже церкви. Абсолютно забытое Богом место. Автобусы ходят редко. Павлик                                                                                                                 255  A  similar  usage  of  an  iconic  myth  to  talk  about  contemporary  reality  is  demonstrated  by  Vladimir   Ageev  in  the  staging  of  “Devushka  i  Revoliutsioner”  –  discussed  in  the  previous  chapter.     193   заменяет собой духовную жизнь.”256 (“They hold him very dear. They don't really have anything besides Pavlik. Not even a church. This is absolutely a god-forsaken place. No regular buses. Pavlik replaces all spiritual life. ”) In a time when most children of Pavlik’s age do not know his name, this pageant seems so absurd that many of the audience members are under the impression that the videos are deliberately rehearsed and recorded, that they are not documentary, but mockumentary. As much as it defeats the initial idea of its creators — Belenitskaia and Grigoriev — this effect actually adds to the critical commentary of the performance. The footage becomes part of the set, not only thanks to being physically placed onstage, but because of the fictional quality it acquires through the eyes of the audience. Existing in the liminal state between reality and fiction (just as the iconic character of Pavlik does), it becomes a living commentary on the shaping of myth by the blurred boundary between the real and the imaginary. Belenitskaia permits the audience to understand the shrewd metaphorical nature of her meta-reflection from the very beginning of the performance. Cranberries are scattered across the stage: a rather naturalistic tribute to historical circumstances as Pavlik was killed in a forest while picking cranberries. As the barefooted actors step on the cranberries, the stage gradually becomes red. This is the color of blood, the color of the October Revolution, and of the Soviet flag: it is the color of Russia. The realistic mode imperceptibly shifts into the symbolic: myth in its metaphorical attire makes its first entrance onstage.                                                                                                                 256  Nina  Belenitskaia,  Skype  Interview,  September  21st,  2011.     194   An important part of the “Pavlik My God” performance is the interactive game with the audience, which utilizes the expansive symbolic language of the pioneer paraphernalia. Pavlik and Tania first appear onstage to the sounds of a popular pioneer song, dressed as young pioneer leaders and waving a red flag. The audience members are addressed as if they were pioneers. The purpose of this game is not only to quote the past, evoking a time already gone; it functions as a gateway between the actors and the audience. By “casting” the audience, the actors invite a reciprocal action: the audience are in their turn free to project their notions onto them. The actors soon remove their pioneer garments and become ordinary contemporary young people, as the stage direction indicates. This represents an instance before the pair become “Pavlik” and “Tania”: for a short moment in time, they are part of the audience. This liminal space, suggested by the stage direction, accentuates the superficiality of the ritual: the previously enacted pioneer scene seems to have been effective only due to props and costumes. This technique has echoes of Alexei Yurchak’s theory of ritualized acts and gestures in the Soviet Union: in certain contexts (especially once uttered or performed to exhaustion) they cease to refer to the ideological meaning and take on a different role. He writes: “The performative dimension continues to be central in this ritualized act, but the constative dimension has moved from its original meaning.”257 Belenitskaia demonstrates how the reproduction of form replaces meaning: the depletion of a ceremony, which has lost its signified. In a sense, this is a reflection of the signifying process of the Pavlik myth, a myth lost within the immense scope of the                                                                                                                 257  Alexei  Yurchak,  Everything  Was  Forever  Until  It  Was  No  More  (Princeton:  Princeton  University   Press,  2006),  22-­‐23     195   creative work dedicated to it. Not only does the myth become removed from its origin, but the content is forsaken in attempts to reproduce the form. Another critical tactic used by Belenitskaia is her an ironic overview on the literature that has shaped the “Pavlik” myth. Pavlik himself lists all the works written about him: Не считая всяких стихов, прозы и памятников, обо мне сочинили симфоническую поэму “Павлик Морозов”, пионерский спектакль- концерт “Взвейтесь кострами” для хора в сопровождении барабана и оперу “Павлик Морозов” – в 3-х действиях, 7 картинах и с эпилогом. […] А я вот балет на коньках о себе искал, но не нашел. Неужели еще не написали?258 Disregarding all kinds of poetry, prose and monuments, I’ve been the hero of a symphonic poem “Pavlik Morozov”, a pioneer concert show for a chorus with a drum, an opera in 3 acts, 7 scenes and an epilogue. […] I never came across an ice-skating ballet about myself. I'm surprised no one came up with one yet. Demonstrating to what extent he has disappeared under the pile of accounts offered about him, Pavlik describes how every new work removes another bit of his life, offering parallels to the portrait of Dorian Grey, which slowly takes life away from its owner. Throughout the play the protagonists keep on reenacting works about Pavlik’s life: from reciting Shchipachiov’s poem to singing an opera libretto. This ongoing shift backwards and forward to the spaces of different texts emphasizes the fractured nature of Pavlik’s existence. He performs every work about him with equal ease, yet his essence is to be found in neither one of them, rather it is fragmented between them all. The graceful irony Belenitskaya uses can be placed within the realm of Derridean playfulness. On the one hand, as Plato claims, it derives from play, and hence is not to be taken seriously. On the other:                                                                                                                 258  Belenitskaia,  Pavlik  My  God,  8.       196   …in the order of becoming, when one cannot lay claim to a firm and stable logos, when one must make do with the probable, then myth is the done thing, it is rigor. […]These two motifs are necessarily interwoven, which gives the game its seriousness and the seriousness its play. […] In these moments of recreation one abandons reasonings on the subject of eternal beings; one seeks what is probable on the subject of becoming. One can then take a pleasure there without remorse; one can moderately and reasonably enjoy the game.259 This “pleasure without remorse” that Belenitskaya takes, the full self-indulgence in mythology is akin to the Conceptualist aggrandizement and explosion of mythical matter. In this way, “Pavlik My God” does not propose a new version, but comments on the way in which new versions are created. Pavlik first emerges from the audience, reciting the famous Soviet chastushka while coming onstage: “Павлик Морозов варил холодец / По полу ползал безногий отец.”260 (“Pavlik Morozov was making a meat jelly. His legless father was crawling on the floor.”) This move is more than a meta-reflection on the myth: the apparent absurdity of the quote (Pavlik has never been accused of either patricide or cannibalism) manages to highlight — in a grotesque concise summation — the incongruity of what the Pavlik myth has become. Moreover, the randomness of Pavlik’s appearance, a suggestion that his role could be assigned to anyone else, is an indication of his mythological status: Pavlik is not just a mirror, but an empty shell: anyone can step into his shoes. Certain deliberate oddities of the play contribute to this picture. For instance, Belenitskaia’s Pavlik was never a pioneer, yet he is the one to indoctrinate Tanya, making her repeat the oath after him. As part of the oath he adds: “Именем пионера-героя                                                                                                                 259  Jacques  Derrida,  On  the  Name,  ed.  Thomas  Dutoit  (Stanford:  Stanford  University  Press,  1995),   112.   260  Translation  by  the  author;  the  chastushka  was  omitted  from  the  English  version  of  the  play.       197   Павлика Морозова клянусь не щадить родного отца.”261 (“I swear by the name of the hero-pioneer PAvlik Morozov to have no mercy on my own father.”) Obviously, that sentence was never part of the official Soviet pioneer oath and Pavlik adds it because it is precisely what Tanya wants to hear. If, for decades, people used the myth for their own agendas, it now adapts under its own momentum and is willing to tell any kind of lie. The myth overtly and shamelessly demonstrates its own mythological abilities. This is not resignation, but, on the contrary, a challenge! The mythological figure revolts. In Grigoriev’s performance Pavlik (Leonid Telezhinskii) wears white make up on all exposed body parts: he resembles a statue. It is Pavlik’s own monument who pays a visit to Tania. The quite obvious allusion to Pushkin’s “Stone Guest” is not accidental: this is a sort of revenge of the modern Commandore: the myth rebels. The final act of disclosure happens at the very end of the performance when the audience becomes part of the show. In the last scene Pavlik tells Tania about the notes he has been receiving over the years; he boasts of granting wishes (just like any self- respecting martyr) and promises to grant Tania’s wish as well. Then Pavlik distributes blank notes to the audience members, inviting them to participate in this happening. A huge jar descends onstage attached to a rope. It is filled with notes written by audience members at previous shows. While Pavlik says to Tania (who asks him if he grants all wishes): “От наркомании и алкоголизма не кодирую,”262 (“I can’t help you, if you’re an alcoholic or a druggie”) the actor makes another joke to the audience, warning them not to ask for money. Simultaneously the documentary footage on the screens features the notes taken out of the little forged poles around Pavlik’s grave in Gerasimovka. The                                                                                                                 261  Belenitskaia,  Pavlik  My  God,  6.   262  Ibid,  10.       198   actors read them out and then turn to the audience, promising full confidentiality. Thus, they present the audience with a double-mimicry: that of the decades-long tradition and that of the previous audiences. In offering this game, Belenitskaya not only stretches the myth’s loosely signifying essence as far as possible, but she places it in a liminal position between a performative demonstration and an inherently self-ironic doubly removed ritual. While several audience members giggle and exchange looks, most people take the occurrence seriously. Notes with innermost desires and requests are written to Pavlik Morozov. (Belenitskaia confesses that at one point the jar has become so overfilled that the crew members have had to take some of the notes out to create some empty space.)263 Inadvertently and even innocently the audience also become Pavlik’s “tormentors”: by their pretend belief in his omnipotence, they perpetuate the myth. The actions of the audience expose the working mechanism of the myth: for Belenitskaia and Grigoriev the interactive end of the performance is a means of demonstrating, and thus revealing, the sign. (Interestingly, Marat Gatsalov - the director of the Yale workshop reading - who has never seen Grigoriev’s show, has intuitively chosen the same ritualistic move: the American audience are also asked to write their wishes to Pavlik.264) The power of the myth is striking. In fact, several audience members have told Belenitskaya that the wishes they have naively (or playfully) addressed to Pavlik have been granted. (For instance, one person in the audience has asked that the performance receives the grand-prix of the Koliada festival, which happened several weeks later265).                                                                                                                 263  Belenitskaia,  Interview.   264  Possibly,  this  achieves  an  even  greater  effect:  a  translation  of  the  myth  to  a  foreign  culture.     265  After  the  last  show  in  Yekaterinburg  in  2012,  the  crew  of  the  performance  has  buried  “Pavlik’s”   note  jar  in  the  earth.  The  cycle  has  come  to  full  end.     199   Curiously, the ritualistic ending of “Pavlik My God” contains all three essential ingredients, which, according to the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, constitute the definition of magic: “In its performance there always enter certain words, spoken or chanted; certain ceremonial actions are always carried out; and there is always an officiating minister of the ceremony.”266 The character playing Pavlik (importantly, still in character) is the one who officiates at the ceremony and speaks the words, while it is mainly the audience that performs the ceremonial action. Thus, the audience is engaged in a magical ceremony, lead by a fictional persona and performing a real, specific (physical) action, framed by a conditionally fictional setting (the show). The liminal state of the happening — between fiction and reality — is reminiscent of myth; it gives the audience the opportunity to feel themselves part of a myth, to be a myth. The performance provides an immersion in the myth through what seems to be a catharsis: a conscious mirroring of the myth’s structure instead of another theft of its signifying function. Pavlik rejects any super human powers that are attributed to him. The quiet, wistful last words of the play put an end not only to Tania’s personal story, but also to Pavlik’s. One can easily notice the ironic, almost mocking way in which Pavlik grants Tania’s wish: ТАНЯ (Павлику). Я хочу, чтобы папа был. Пауза. ПАВЛИК. Папа был.267 TANIA (to Pavlik). I just wish I had a father. Pause PAVLIK. You had a father.                                                                                                                 266  Bronislaw  Malinowski,  Myth  in  Primitive  Psychology  (London:  Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Trubner  &  Co,   1926),  110.   267  Belenitsaia,  Pavlik  My  God,  10.       200   The promised catharsis turns into a mock-catharsis. The play’s finale reveals the joke through the means of language; it is language itself that transmits Pavlik’s helplessness. In his answer Pavlik repeats the last two words of Tania’s request (“Dad was”) to create a completely different meaning: he cannot fulfill the girl’s wish to have a father, only to state the fact that she once used to have him. Being a myth, “Pavlik” is capable only of echoing Tania: it is hopelessly reduced to a mirror image of its possessor. In actuality nothing changes. Pavlik resigns, having demonstrated the illusion of mythical powers, while Tania is forced to face reality. Just like post-revolutionary culture, post-Soviet culture faces a crisis of identity: orphaned from the Soviet regime, it ventures upon another search for new foundations, for a new father figure and, thus, the “Pavlik Morozov” myth is as relevant and poignant as ever. Not accidentally, the female protagonist of the play is also symbolically orphaned — rejected — by her father. After a failed (semi-comical) attempt to kill the betraying father, Tania replaces the physical sacrifice of the father by a ritual one (equated by Freud to an actual deed). Throughout the course of the play, Tania satisfies her need for authority by turning to Pavlik and transforming him into a father figure. However, the suggested romantic shade of their relationship complicates and thwarts the search of a modern “orphaned child”. True to the precepts of Barthes, Belenitskaia counters myth not with “truth”, but with her own myth. More accurately, she invents a myth about the myth: a meta myth, which exposes the mythological structure by a combination of the formalist “baring of the device” and the conceptualist “baring of the sign”. The performative, interactive aspect of this technique makes the audience understand how mythological formations   201   work and brings awareness of their own potential contribution to such societal mechanisms. The spectator is forced to face a moment of truth: to make a wish, that is, to focus on a desire related to daily reality. Belenitskaia and Grigoriev gently remove the discourse from past to present: “Сверх цель режиссера – чтобы человек, который пришел на спектакль, четко сформулировал для себя, что он хочет.”268 (“The super- objective of the director is making the spectators clearly formulate their wishes and desires.”) Thus, participation in reenacting mythology is characterized by a shift of focus to the outside of the mythical frame. Belenitskaia and Grigoriev lead the audience through a process of myth-therapy. The collective myth-making pushes the individual audience member towards important self-inquiries.                                                                                                                 268  Belenitskaia,  Interview.       202   CONCLUSION When it comes to myth, there are only a few basic concepts agreed upon by the representatives of all intellectual traditions; one of them is the inexhaustibility of the mythological image. This phenomenon is discussed by the structuralist Levi-Strauss, by the post-structuralists Derrida and De Man, and by Hans Blumenberg (who seems to have developed his own distinct thought in philosophy). Evidently, mythological thought (being cyclical in nature) simply has no interest in any definite beginning or endings. According to Blumenberg’s theory, bringing myth to an end (i.e. reaching the limit of work on myth) could be achieved only by producing a final myth that fully exploits and exhausts the mythical form as such. However, the mythical form by its very nature exhausts other forms and perpetuates a never-ending reproduction; as Blumenberg claims, the effectiveness of myth consists not simply in the intention that commands us to forgo further production of myths, but rather “in its making it possible for the first time to experience the fascination that does not allow one to rest until one has imitated the model, equated the standard that it sets or even surpassed it.”269 It is this conundrum of the paradoxical mechanism of the myth, which causes its amazing endurance and makes its elimination impossible. While a lot of attention has been given to the reasons behind the immortality of myth, the process of this wondrous preservative salvation has never been broken down and analyzed in detail. In this dissertation we have seen the different modes and patterns of the rejuvenation and reincarnation of myth: the tactics of survival under the conditions                                                                                                                 269  Hans  Blumenberg,  Work on Myth (Cambridge & London: The MIT Press,1985), 288.   203   of an extreme change in the socio-political (and, consequently, mythological) frame. Each of the three iconic Soviet myths examined in this thesis illustrates a different kind of myth: each has its unique mechanism and function and, thus, its own tactic of survival in post-Soviet space. The myth of “Lenin” — tightly linked to the commodity aesthetic from the moment of its creation — is destined to approach a commodity as closely as possible: the myth itself, the name and image of “Lenin” is abused in the way of popular merchandise, as a signifier for numerous other myths, a servile emptied sign that is appropriated to serve other signs. It becomes a pseudo myth, merely an imitation of the originally intended meaning, and is no longer read as symbol. The original language/discourse of the myth is falsified and replaced by a surrogate: to be precise, the signifying function of the language remains, while the discourse is utterly dislocated. The disunity of signifier and signified, the crisis of the sign is reflected in everything that surrounds the myth: in the seemingly subversive Lenin jokes, which inevitably only emphasize the official discourse rather than mock it; in the appropriative, empty language of the myth demonstrated in Victor Denisov’s play; in the fake, mediated liveness of the Double’s performance in Alexandra Kolesnikova’s play; and, most of all, in the Double’s repeating the very structure of the myth: the undulating movement of copying — in turn — Lenin’s appearance, thoughts and actions (exterior, interior and exterior), inadvertently reflecting the journey of the “Lenin myth” from iconic to ritualistic and back. The signifying ability of the “Lenin” myth has survived the fall of the Soviet Union, and eventually the sign has become loose enough to grow into a metaphor for the identity crisis of the 90s, reflected by the emptiness and lack of identity of the sign. As a metaphor, the “Lenin myth”   204   becomes an ultimate signifier, fulfilling its potential to the outmost; it is the incredible looseness of the myth, (originating in its prostitution), which smoothly transplants it to the new reality. The “Stalin” myth, in contrast, never points to anything, but turns all arrows to point at itself. The myth subjects everything to its rule, presenting itself as the endless, eternal signified. Swallowing all other surrounding signs and myths during the period of its hegemony, the myth eventually victimized itself, falling into its own solipsistic trap, a ceaseless reproductive pattern of its image under different guises. On the other hand, it is this quality — the variety, the richness of the signifiers encompassed by this one abysmal signified — which makes the myth invincible. As it slowly begins to fulfil a signifying function, to serving as a smokescreen for different epochs, each of which creates its own Stalin “portrait”, it, nevertheless, constantly resorts to its past as a signified. Woven out of many adjacent mythologems, having so much to offer, the “Stalin” myth has a clear advantage in adapting to a changed environment. The ‘hugeness’, ‘all-inclusiveness’ of the myth allows it to survive the change; it fits wonderfully into the varied, fragmented post-perestroika reality, being itself composed of many fragments. The “Stalin” myth embodies the closest illustration of Blumenberg’s theory: “myth allows itself incompatible variants in abundance without ever risking the combined state of contradiction, of antinomy.”270 Following the complex metamorphosis and the variations of the “Stalin myth”, it seems indeed impossible to exclude the possibility of further variations and retelling.                                                                                                                 270  Blumenberg,  Work  On  Myth,128.       205   The “Pavlik Morozov” myth is a striking example of the archetypal myth. As demonstrated in the third chapter, “Pavlik” is a concentrated, Soviet (and cathartic) variation of the child martyr/child hero archetype (deeply grounded in Russian cultural history) combined with the “orphaned child” socio-political (Freudian) model. This combination raises the symbolic status of the myth to a very high level, rendering it especially desirable. “Pavlik” is a fragment, a fraction of eternal myths, that became rooted in the country’s consciousness long before the appearance of the Soviet frame. Therefore, when this frame disintegrated, “Pavlik” — as a part of a larger myth — did not suffer neglect and oblivion. As a true archetypal myth, it easily responds to the needs and demands of any system, mirrors the immediate concerns of its present reality. The ability to be recreated in the hands of any arbitrary maker reflects yet another illustration of Blumenberg’s belief: “In myth the mythologist’s imagination narrates its own history […]. This is why there can be a ‘new myth’ whenever the poetic imagination comes to itself, and this, its own story, becomes the subject.”271 This exemplary agility, the openness to artistic refashioning guarantees the successful transcendence of the “Pavlik myth”. Despite the differences, there is one significant characteristic that is shared by all three myths: performativity. The “Lenin” myth is performative by relation, being inseparable from the myth of the October revolution, itself an interactive and performative myth by definition (the reenactment of the revolutionary script, and the establishment of collective identity through a national ritual). This inseparable connection to the originating myth, the blending of the mythical and the ritualistic, gives the “Lenin                                                                                                                 271  Blumenberg,  Work  On  Myth,  61-­‐62.     206   myth” its function as a mechanism in motion — a perpetuum mobile — this ongoing tension between liveness and the scripting (mediation) of liveness (reflected, amongst other ways, in the position of the mummy), which creates the performative pendulum. The eventual looseness of the signifier only augments the degree of potential performativity of the sign, the prospect of an eternal “role-playing game”. As for “Stalin”, this myth — attaining a life of its own — nevertheless keeps on striving towards a certain mythical model of self previously established. The fragmented progeny of the mega myth are created by a myriad of signifiers that still allude still to the same signified. In fact, the myth survives through constantly pointing and referring to itself, that is through the performance of self. In this performance, too, there is a degree of liminality: in this case, it is the liminality of the sign itself: the delicate balance between the eternal signified and the multiplying signifiers. The “Pavlik myth” is innately, inherently performative: performance is interwoven not only into its texture, but into its very process of creation. As stated in the previous chapter, “Pavlik Morozov” is a performative novel, which features real characters as people; it is a creative collaboration carried out by the authorities, the national consciousness and the artistic fashioning of journalists and writers. Moreover, this performative myth is set as a performative model, destined to be reenacted both in life and literature. The liminality of the “Pavlik myth” is precisely in its conflation of reality and fiction (typical of all iconic myths, yet exhibited here in a supremely concentrated form). As we can see, the three iconic myths are performative in different ways (just as their liminality lies in different grey zones). Yet, each of them uses performativity   207   (rigorously linked to a certain liminal state) as a means of survival and reproduction. The surprising, even paradoxical revelation is that the mythological mechanism of all three myths is revealed performatively, that is, within the frame of a theatrical performance and/or in a text intended for the stage. For instance, the performance of Victor Denisov’s play offers the possibility of a non-verbal medium (in this case music), which — when contrasted with a manipulative and easily manipulated language — is impenetrable to myth due to its non-verbality. Another contribution of the performative frame is the opportunity to engage the audience members, who are invited to make a choice regarding their participation in the mythological spell. Likewise, the staging of Alexandra Kolesnikova’s play helps to bring out its performative potential, illustrating the performativity of the “Lenin” myth. The double performance of the actor who plays Koklenkov (the actor playing a person who impersonates a mythological icon) creates a performative liminality, reenacting the mechanism, which pushes the myth forward in a constant multiplication of identities. Despite the enormous challenge and difficulty of taming the blatantly un- monolithic myth of “Stalin”, one successful way is offered by the overtly theatrical, self- referential play of Victor Korkia. Not only does Korkia explicitly show the survival of the myth through distorted replication, he constantly discloses its own construction in refraining from any potentially dangerous absolute: while deconstructing the myth, the play equally deconstructs itself to avoid joining the mythological web. Another notable feature of Korkia’s play is the ongoing game with the audience achieved by continuously pulling them in and out of the playworld; this opportunity to stay both inside and outside   208   the text (a liminal condition in relation to the text) saves the audience from the necessity of definition, which is one of the major traps of myth. A similar interaction and mental engagement (actually, a casting of sorts) of the audience occurs in Vladimir Ageev’s production of “The Girl and the Revolutionary” – the only “Stalin” performance of the 2000s that does not utterly fail to tame the myth. Additionally, the theatrical treatment of Stalin’s icon as a symbol of devilish power and its application to Putin’s Russia brings another form of liminality to the picture, that is, the conflation of historical planes. By showing Stalin as a metaphorical construct, destined to signify a different reality, Ageev demonstrates how the myth simultaneously works as the accursed ‘eternal signified’ and the ultimate signifier. Belenitskaia’s play on Pavlik Morozov consciously reiterates the signifying function of the myth, also using it to reflect on contemporary Russia. Simultaneously, the interaction with the spectators that is premeditated in the text — the invitation to use the “empty screen” of the myth for the projection of their own notions, and the seductive opportunity to become part of the myth that is taken up by all audiences — demonstrates and reveals the agile adaptability of the myth. The ritualistic and yet palpably real and actual character of the engagement in mythical procedure places the audience in a liminal state between reality and fiction, reflecting the liminality of the myth itself and thus creating a myth of the myth: a meta myth. In fact, one may argue that the Conceptualist (and post-Conceptualist) ways of demythologization are also, to a certain degree, performative. For instance, the presentation of “Lenin” as an overcharged and confused sign achieved by the recontextualization and fragmentation of the historic persona (as in the case of Kurekhin   209   and Erofeev) is the embodiment of a mock performance of the myth. In Denisov’s play, the deliberate empowerment of the signifier leads to a creation of a falsified, coded language: in essence, a performative language. Likewise, the exaggeration of the properties of the “Stalin myth” employed by Prigov and the Sots-Artists — the inflation to a point of ridicule, the making of the myth larger than its own conventions — constitutes a hyper performance of the myth. Ironically, it is the medium of performance that brings out and emphasizes the performative quality of myth, that provides evidence of its mythological status. It could be said that performative myth is most successfully battled with its own kind of weapon, but in actuality the opposite is the case; the actualization (through stage or text) of the myth’s performative mechanism is not a battle, nor a resistance, that, in any case, would always be futile, but an active participation in the myth, a hyperbolized embracing of it, which derives its structure from the event by performatively enacting it, thus unarming the myth. In a sense, this procedure is akin to that suggested by Barthes – the reinvention of a new more sophisticated mythology in place of the existing one: the new mythology is reinvented from the raw material of the existing myth: the myth performs itself to the point of being hyperbolic and inflated beyond recognition. While surviving within the coordinates of any external frame, however changed, the myth cannot surpass the stretching of its inner boundaries. 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