The Birch Journal Spring 2015

The Birch Spring 2015

Undergraduate Journal of Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies Columbia University

Cover photo: Ainsley Katz Inside cover: Heloise Taillet

The Birch Founded in 2004, The Birch Journal is the first national undergraduate publication devoted exclusively to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies. Any undergraduate student at any college can submit work to be published in our annual issue, featured both online and in print. We accept creative writing (poetry, prose, creative nonfiction, short stories), literary criticism (essays and book reviews), and essays on the culture and politics of the region.

Sasha Henriques Barnard College, Class of 2015 • President, Editor-in-Chief Cody Nager Columbia College, Class of 2016 • Head Politics and Culture Editor Alexandrina Danilov Barnard College, Class of 2018 • Deputy Politics and Culture Editor Alex Braslavsky Columbia College, Class of 2017 • Secretary, Head Literary Criticism Editor Ainsley Katz Columbia College, Class of 2018 • Treasurer, Deputy Literary Criticism Editor Vivian Tanga Columbia College, Class of 2016 • Head Creative Writing and Translation Editor Kate Seidel Columbia College, Class of 2017 • Head Layout and Design Editor Seth Farkas Columbia College, Class of 2018 • Website Manager, Deputy Layout and Design Editor Jordan Lewis School of General Studies, Class of 2016 • Staff member Anastasiya Moroz Barnard College, Class of 2017 • Staff member Katherine Floess Columbia College, Class of 2015 • Staff member

thebirchonline.org • like us on Facebook (The Birch Journal)

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A Letter from the Editor 2014 and 2015 have been big years for Eastern Europe, and Russia in particular. President Vladimir Putin is certainly not a new presence in the international arena of politics, but his, dare I say, notoriety seems to be taking on almost mythical proportions (he’s even been “fictionalized” on Netflix’s political drama House of Cards—you just can’t buy that kind of publicity). The larger-than-life leader has ushered in a new period in Eastern Europe: a period that seems to mirror a kind of USSR 2.0, with international incidents, mass violence, acts of war, and what many believe is the forced annexation of Crimea.

Kiev was thrown into the limelight as anti-government protests—with up to 800,000 participators—turned deadly. Yulia Tymoshenko, Pussy Riot, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky were released from prison. Other oppositional leaders were silenced, whether permanently (such as Boris Nemtsov) or only temporarily (such as blogger Alexei Navalny).

About a year ago, I read a (rather terrifying) article about the declining state of Russian and Slavic Studies in institutions of higher learning in the United States. Not only are the number of degrees conferred in the field of our region of study decreasing, but the number of qualified experts Slavic Studies in the US seems to be growing smaller and smaller in return (most notably this year, with the passing of Cathy Nepomnyashchy, Chair of Barnard College’s Slavic Department and beloved professor). This phenomenon seems to defy logic—if Eastern Europe is such a hotbed of international political activity, of commotion and turmoil, shouldn’t as many students and scholars be dedicating their attentions to the region as possible?

This year’s edition of The Birch Journal proves that though there may be fewer students devoting their studies to Slavic, Eurasian, and Eastern European culture and politics, the strength and quality of these academic pursuits certainly isn’t diminishing. From our This Year in Eastern Europe section to Culture & Politics, from Literary Criticism to Creative Writing & Translation, undergraduate students from around the country have contributed their brilliant essays and works. If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that Slavic Studies in the US won’t be dying out anytime soon.

It has been an honor and a privilege working with such a great staff to put out this year’s edition for you. Thank you to our contributors, our supporters, and our readers. We hope you enjoy our journal.

Sasha Henriques Editor-in-Chief

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Contents This Year in Eastern Europe

Twenty-Five Years • Anastasiya Moroz The Fall of the Ruble • Seth Farkas Alaska: Burden or Bounty for Imperial Russia? • Cody Nager Where was Putin? • Alexandrina Danilov “There is no authority except from God”: A (Meta-) Review of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan • Kate Seidel Nemtsov’s Assassination as Art • Alex Braslavsky

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Politics & Culture

Pagan Meets Christian: The Reading of Omens in the Primary Chronicle Claudia Lahr Gender Equality in Central Asia • Susanna An Looking Inside the Streetcar: Travel and Self-Progress in Balabanov’s Brother Dalia Wolfson State-Building in Georgia after the Rose Revolution: Institutional Reform, Political Contestation, and Constituency • Kate Seidel

Photography

from Agnė Radavičiutė, Bianka Ukleja, Heloise Taillet, and Ainsley Katz

Literary Criticism

“What Can Be Done?”: Sonya’s Suffering and the Power of the Word • Razi Shaban The Petersburg Prostitute: Depictions of Illusive Women in Gogol and Dostoevsky Elizabeth Drooby “Great Man” or History’s Slave: Portrayals of Napoleon in War and Peace Hannah Fagin Being Human: Definitions from the Fate and Journey of the Master and Margarita Cathy Shen

Creative Writing

A Few Things • Nina Balac Formerly, Presently, and What Could Be • Anastasiya Moroz When Ivanovna’s Building Was Purged of Counter-Revolutionaries and Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread • Noah Glover-Ettrich

Translation

Winter • Sergey Ostrovskiy • translated by Olga Korobova She Came From the Frost • Alexander Blok • translated by Veniamin Gushchin

15 18 24 29 37 50 55 60 65 71 72 74 77 78

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In Memoriam: Catharine Nepomnyashchy (1951-2015)

Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Russian Literature and Culture Chair of the Barnard Slavic Department

photo by Eileen Barroso Columbia University

We were incredibly saddened to learn of the news of Professor Nepomnyashchy’s passing this March. Professor Nepomnyashchy worked in the Barnard College Slavic Department for 28 years. After conferring a BA and an MA in French Studies from Brown University in 1973, she came to Columbia University to study Russian Literature. She received her PhD in 1987 and was immediately hired by the Barnard Slavic Department. She served as the director of the Harriman Institute from 2001 to 2009, and was honored as the institute’s Alumna of the Year in 2012. She also served as the president of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) from 2005-2007, and received the AATSEEL Award for Outstanding Service to the Profession in 2011. She authored three books and countless articles and translations.

Notably, in her time as a student at Columbia, she co-founded Ulbandus, The Slavic Review of Columbia University, The Birch Journal’s (older) brother publication, staffed by graduate students in the Slavic department. Her dedication to Ulbandus guaranteed her infinitely enthusiastic help and approval of The Birch Journal.

Cathy Nepomnyashchy was instrumental in The Birch Journal’s success since its 2004 inception, and we are infinitely thankful for her generosity, wisdom, incredible depth of knowledge, and countless moments of support. She was much loved, and will be missed.

THIS YEAR

IN EASTERN EUROPE With contributions from: Anastasiya Moroz • Barnard College, Class of 2017 Seth Farkas • Columbia College, Class of 2018 Cody Nager • Columbia College, Class of 2016 Alexandrina Danilov • Barnard College, Class of 2018 Kate Seidel • Columbia College, Class of 2017 Alex Braslavsky • Columbia College, Class of 2017

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Twenty-Five Years Anastasiya Moroz

From August 13th, 1960 to November 9th, 1989, the Soviet Union extended its influence from the borders of Eastern Europe into the Western world. For decades, families, friends, and governments were separated by a wall that stretched the length of the city of Berlin.

The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall would become important and revolutionary events in the Cold War; the Wall would greatly affect how the world viewed the policies and practices of the Soviet Union. The Wall was not only a physical barrier, but also a symbolic one: it was the “Iron Curtain”—first dubbed by Winston Churchill in a speech given in Missouri in 1946—only in concrete form, with a patrolled “Death Strip” between the East and West, complete with fences topped with barbed wire and other such devices to prevent people from moving across the border. Today, the Wall still exists in parts all over the world, with some sections even in personal art collections. A greater chunk still stands in Berlin and forms the East Side Gallery; artists use it to express themselves—and what could not have been expressed in the 20th century. The history of the Wall is painful for many; it signified the rise of Communist power in Western Europe.

The history of Germany and specifically Berlin under Soviet rule begins much earlier, in 1945, with the partitioning of Germany into four parts by each allied country that fought in the Second World War. The United Kingdom, France, and the United States took over the three western quarters, while the Soviet Union held power over the eastern quarter. Berlin was also split into four parts, with the Soviet Union again in control of the eastern part. In the beginning, the flow of people between east and west was unregulated; citizens came and went freely. Gradually, however, the amount of people defecting from east to west began to overwhelm the authoritarian Soviet government. On August 13th, 1960, a momentous task began: to build a wall that would prevent defection from the East to the West; a wall that would close the border for good. After the completion of the Wall, Germans in the East were essentially locked under the power and principles of the Soviet regime. And for almost three decades, they were totally excluded from the western world.

After decades of tense international relations, in the late ‘80s, the Cold War began to thaw. This new wave of westernization and the reignited fight for political freedom resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall. On November 9th, 1989 at midnight, thousands of people began a movement that soon resulted in the destruction of the symbol of separation between East and West. The celebration continued through the night and millions of people flooded through the remnants of the Wall in either direction.

This past November, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated with excitement, pride, and even nostalgia for some. The full length of the Wall was recreated with 8,000 balloons that lit up the night sky, floating away one after another in a line that stretched approximately nine miles. Famous German singers and musicians performed in a tribute concert, including singer Wolf Biermann, who, at the height of the Cold War, defected from West Germany to East Germany. Biermann’s performance was

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particularly poignant, as he had supported a point of view many had not endorsed. His presence and performance highlighted the vast spectrum of people affected by the Wall.

The celebrations on November 9th also included a performance by the Berliner Philharmoniker, which played Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as a tribute to the triumph of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Other events included exhibition openings, some of which shared the stories of those who were affected by the Wall. The exhibit “100 Wall Stories” does just that, as it explores the history of the Wall from 1961 to the day it came down in 1989. The entire city of Berlin was overtaken by street festivals, musical performances, and exhibitions. Orchestral and chamber music groups performed in at Checkpoint-Charlie and the East Side Gallery.

Throughout the entire week, there were guided tours along the route of the balloon installation.

All events surrounding the anniversary of the fall of the Wall represented the history of the tumultuous times and celebrated the promise of unity. The day served as a reminder for many of the struggle for peace and served as a call against violence for all. For the Germans, the Wall was a symbol of restraint that not only kept a nation divided in two, but also symbolized the suffocating power and control that extended far past its limits from the Soviet Union into the Western World. The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall celebrated and honored the promise for a peaceful, unified future, while the memories of discontent only serve as reminders of that period of tension and pain.

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The Fall of the Ruble Seth Farkas

The Russian economy experienced amounting troubles throughout 2014 and early 2015 as the value of the ruble dropped relative to the American dollar and the euro. The rate of decline has varied significantly, peaking at a 19 percent drop within one twenty-four hour period in mid-December, marking the country’s worst value drop of the ruble in sixteen years (Kitroeff and Weisenthall). Economists outside the Russian Federation have pointed towards economic sanctions from the West and the falling price of oil as the primary causes of the collapse. Russian government officials, however, have pointed towards psychological causes within Russia itself, namely Russians’ negative economic expectations. Despite conflicting viewpoints of the collapse, it is clear that future growth of the ruble will require significant work on the part of both the Russian government and the West.

General trends in decline throughout the past year can be linked to drops in oil prices and sanctions by the West in response to Putin’s conduct towards Ukraine, such as Russia’s occupation of Crimea. However, many US economists blame the sharp decline of the value of the ruble in December on fear, signified by the immediate panic of traders and investors to take their money out of Russian assets (Kitroeff and Weisenthall). American economist Carl Weinberg argues that the Central Bank of Russia has been printing money to help state-owned corporations cover their debt in foreign currencies—another possible factor (Matthews). Russian officials tend to rebuke many of the issues pointed out by Western economists. The Russian Banks’ Association President Garegine Tosunyan names hysteria in the Russian financial market as the sole cause of the collapse. He maintains that the ruble’s value has begun to rebound, stating, “[t]he undervalued ruble will continue its growth” (qtd. in Zamyatina). Overall, there is a wide array of contributions to the collapse of the ruble, and though the currency has stabilized somewhat since, an economically significant rebound is not yet in sight.

Russian officials responded to the fall of the ruble at first by using the national stockpile of foreign currencies to buy rubles, in hopes of increasing its value. Additionally, the Central Bank announced a large 17 percent increase in interest rate in the hopes of convincing investors to keep their money in rubles. Even so, Fortune writer Chris Matthews contends that given the “$670 billion in debt denominated in foreign currencies […] it will become impossible for Russian companies to service [that debt] if the ruble continues to fall” (Matthews). He points out that in many other instances, the International Monetary Fund provides funding to bolster the country in question’s economy, but in this case, this is unlikely to happen due to Putin’s actions in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, most Western economists believe that the first step Putin should take to save the ruble is to diminish and eventually eliminate Russia’s activity in Ukraine (Kitroeff and Weisenthall), even though this is unlikely. The TASS Russia News Agency, owned by the government of Russia, claims that the ruble is already appreciating steadily and strongly. In a TASS article, Vnesheconombank official Vladimir Andrianov is quoted saying, “I believe the

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ruble is currently undervalued and its appreciation will continue and is likely to become a steady trend” (qtd. in Zamyatina). There is unfortunately a clear bias in the viewpoints of both Western and Russian economists, producing two sets of analyses that make little sense when considered together. As a result, only time will tell how Russia will repair its economic crisis.

Fortunately, the value of the ruble has little effect on the American dollar due to the limited trade between the two nations. Therefore, the US has the power to impose effective economic sanctions on Russia without seeing notable negative effects on the US economy.

With little chance of any changes in international relations or economic sanctions due to Putin’s policy towards Ukraine, the US and the EU have left it up to Russia to solve its own economic problems, without the international community’s support.

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Kitroeff, Natalie, and Joseph Weisenthal. “Here’s Why the Russian Ruble is Collapsing.”

Bloomberg Business. Bloomberg, 16 Dec. 2014. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.

Matthews, Chris. “Russian ruble’s fall: A classic ‘currency collapse’.” Fortune. Time, 16 Dec. 2014. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.

Zamyatina, Tamara. “Experts: ruble appreciation set to become steady trend.” TASS. ТАСС Информационное Агентство России, 25 Mar. 2015. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.

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Alaska: Burden or Bounty for Imperial Russia?

Cody Nager

Since the times of Kievan Rus’, the Russian empire had a tradition of methodically expanding through cultural domination, due mostly to the contiguous nature of its eastern Siberian hinterlands. However, the Russian colonization of Alaska marked a departure from this model by instead taking a Western European approach, which sought economic profit instead of cultural domination. This is the thesis presented by Ilya Vinkovetsky in his study of the Russian colonization of Alaska, Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804 –1867 (2014). He argues that Alaska represented “an overseas colony of a continental empire” and remained ill-suited and unintegrated until its sale to the United States in 1867. The actions of the Russian Imperial Court, including the foundation of the Russian American Corporation, serve to highlight Vinkovetsky’s thesis.

A Western-European-style joint stock company, the Russian America Corporation (RAC) was founded in 1797 and granted a monopoly on the Alaskan trade by the imperial bureaucracy. Vinkovetsky claims the idea for the joint-stock company was taken from the Muscovy Company that the British established in 1555 to trade with Russia. He details the complex relations between the RAC Board of Governors and the imperial court, explaining the system of shifting responsibility, which aimed to minimize the impact public failures had on the imperial regime. The lengthy explanations of the political setting seem to be almost counterintuitive, as Vinkovetsky’s thesis rests on the lack of importance given to the “overseas colony.”

While the first section of the book highlights the reception of the Alaskan colony in St. Petersburg, the second concentrates on the atmosphere in the colony itself. As Russia sought access to the lucrative market for goods from the Orient via its gradual expansion east, the Russian America Corporation focused on the exportation of furs, especially those of sea otters. According to Vinkovetsky, the goal of colonizing Alaska was the attempt to create a triangular trade route between Kamchatka, Alaska, and the Orient, which would increase the means of wealthy private investors in St. Petersburg. However, the events of the early 19th century, such as the rise and fall of Napoleon and the War of 1812 (and subsequent invasion of Russia), prevented the trade from developing as intended.

Vinkovetsky also discusses at length the RAC’s interactions with the native Tlingit people of the Alexander Archipelago. The remote nature of the Alaskan colony meant that very few native Russians resided in Novo Arkhangelsk, especially in comparison to the large amount of Tlingit natives. In order to maintain the social order of the colony, the Russians developed a strategy of elevating the upper class Tlingit, thereby creating a hierarchical structure that made the RAC comfortable. While there are similarities in this approach to that of Early British India, Vinkovetsky argues that Russian colonialism was in fact unique due to its dependence on the natives to develop any sort of order and profit. This made tense relations with the natives all the more problematic. In an attempt

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to quell this tension, the RAC also worked closely with the Russian Orthodox Church to build a constituency in the Alaskan Colony. Vinkovetsky highlights the Christianization of the Alaskan Natives as a method of Russification meant to increase the influence of the RAC among the Tlingit natives. This conclusion is in direct contradiction with the traditional narrative, which focuses on the development of native orthodox tendencies. Rather, Vinkovetsky claims that the development of the native orthodox ritual only began after the RAC’s 1867 exit.

If any section of the work most effectively supports Vinkovetsky‘s thesis, it is his final section, which discusses the end of Russian colonialism in the Americas. The eagerness with which the imperial court parted with the “overseas colony” in 1867, in return for the rather substantial American offer of $7.2 million, serves to emphasize how out of place Alaska was in the traditional Russian narrative context. While most of Vinkovetsky’s chronicle is successful at establishing the otherness of Alaska, the limited scope of the work, which fails to consider for any appreciable length the American, Spanish, and British claims on adjoining territory over the period that he investigates, may be its most glaring weakness. However, Vinkovetsky’s narrative succeeds in proving the fundamental difference highlighted in the subtitle of the work (An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire) and how it had come to take its toll on Russian colonial expansion. Vinkovetsky’s conclusions about the Russian Colonization of Alaska should be of interest to scholars of Imperial Russia and the Age of Expansionism, Imperialism, and Colonization.

Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804 –1867. By Ilya Vinkovetsky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 276 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Maps. $27.95, soft bound.

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Where Was Putin?

Alexandrina Danilov

Beginning on March 6th of 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly vanished from public view for 10 days. After attending a press conference with the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, on March 5th, he simply disappeared—he cancelled a scheduled visit to Kazakhstan, prompting an anonymous Kazakh official to report that he had fallen ill. He postponed a meeting with officials from Georgia’s South Ossetia region.

But it was around the time of his cancelled trip to Kazakhstan on March 11th that rumors regarding his disappearance began circulating throughout social media, and media sources went insane with outlandish possibilities for the reason behind Putin’s disappearance.

When the independent news outlet Dozhd inquired into the bizarre disappearance, Kremlin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov declined to comment. However, Dozhd reported that the president was in Novgorod province, at his home on Lake Valdai. Sources told Reuters that the 62-year-old was staying out of the public’s eye because of illness; however, Peskov asserted that the president was in good health and that his handshake was “still firm.”

Wild, sensational rumors (all of which were denied by the Kremlin) exploded on social media sites and news sources, with speculations for the disappearance ranging from the flu, a stroke, and botched plastic surgery to death, a coup d’etat, and a trip to Switzerland to be with his rumored girlfriend, Alina Kabayeva, for the birth of their child. The hashtag #ПутинУмер, which translates to “Putin died,” quickly spread throughout social media, often placed alongside jokes directed at the Russian president. There were also rumors that the Kremlin was planning a major announcement and that Russian journalists were told to remain in Moscow for a press conference on the statement. Of course, such a press conference never took place.

Peskov repeatedly denied the wild rumors. He announced that Putin was not ill and that he had consistent meetings, not all of which made public. The Kremlin even released photos and footage of Putin at the aforementioned meetings that presumably took place during his prolonged absence, which did nothing to lessen the mad gush of gossip and speculation.

The rumors and memes associated with his disappearance finally came to an end when he met his Kyrgyz counterpart Almazbek Atambayev in St. Petersburg on March 16th. The topic of discussion during the meeting was Kyrgyzstan’s admission into the Eurasian Economic Union. However, it was Putin’s presence at the meeting that was far more important to the media. Looking “relaxed but pale,” according to Reuters, Putin had finally made a scheduled public appearance, with, of course, no explanation for his absence.

Though we may love to speculate on what prompted Putin to stay out of the public eye for such an abnormally long period of time, we might never know what truly happened

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during those 10 days, especially due of Putin’s tendency to keep his personal life extremely private. More importantly, the world has seen the resulting frenzy when a major world leader unexpectedly and inexplicably disappears from the public eye for such a long period of time. Can we expect something like this to happen again? And what are the national and international consequences of such an abrupt withdrawal? Maybe we shouldn’t speculate, but it’s compelling to imagine. As the president himself nonchalantly stated, “Things would be boring without gossip.”

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“There is no authority except from God”: A (Meta-) Review of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan Kate Seidel This year, Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s film Leviathan made headlines when it won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Zvyagintsev’s fourth feature film—he is also known for The Return (2003) and Elena (2011)—centers around a mechanic, Kolya; his second wife, Lilya, who works in a factory that processes fish; and his teenage son from his first marriage, Roma, in a small town in the north of Russia. The town’s mayor, Vadim, intends to take Kolya’s land (and consequently the house that Kolya has built overlooking the sea) through dubious legal maneuvers, and to compensate him for it as poorly as possible. Kolya asks his old friend Dmitry, now a lawyer in Moscow, to help him oppose the mayor, and the fight begins. But, almost unsurprisingly, by the end of the film, the house is repossessed, Kolya’s family and friendships fall apart, and bureaucrats in sleek black cars fill the parking lot of a new church built on what was once Kolya’s land.

Leviathan is thematically related to Thomas Hobbes’ book of the same name, in which people in the unpredictable, violent “state of nature” come together to create an all-powerful sovereign (a kind of monarch vested with the powers of both church and state) in order to live in safety. It is also a loose adaptation of the biblical Book of Job, in which a righteous man contemplates the meaning of what God has done to him (allowing his children to be killed and afflicting him with disease) despite his devotion and faith. Job’s lament is framed as a sign of his faith and desire to know God, and does not constitute blasphemy, which is the opposite of what the Orthodox bishop in the film implies about lament in his conversations with the mayor. Because “there is no authority except from God,” exposing the Church’s corruption means opposition to its authority and, by extension blasphemy.

Of course, Kolya is not as righteous as Job—this is especially visible later in the film, when he is worried about losing control over his wife and son—and in this sense he fits with Hobbes’ vision of human nature. In Hobbes’ imagining, it is impossible for citizens to withdraw their consent to Leviathan’s authority, because it is they who have created it through social contract in order to protect themselves from each other; the Leviathan is not a party to this contract, nor is it bound to obey their will.

In America, Leviathan made the news not only because it was successful, but because the movie’s release in Russia was delayed so that, in accordance with Russia’s censorship laws regarding profanity (a 2014 law bans curse words in public performances of any nature), its profuse cursing could be muted. This led to the widespread public assessment that Zvyagintsev, just like Kolya, had fallen victim to the oppressive power of the state. The

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Atlantic ran an article called “Leviathan: An Incisive Take on Russia Even Putin Couldn’t Ignore,” saying that “the country’s entry for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars is a rare example of a director’s prestige prevailing over a fiercely controlling propaganda machine” (23 Jan 2015). The New York Times (1 Apr 2015) also wrote a rather scathing piece entitled “Russian Artists Face a Choice: Censor Themselves, or Else,” which explains that the danger to Russian culture and art isn’t that the law exists, but that there are no official rules to censorship: Russian filmmakers, writers, and artists must self-censor or face the unpredictable wrath of the state.

Although it’s tempting to try to read the film mostly as a depiction of contemporary Russian life, that’s not entirely what the film signifies. Firstly, the general public’s stereotypes about widespread corruption and the lack of separation between church and state in Russia fit neatly into an interpretation of the film (hence the very nebulous reference in The Atlantic to a “fiercely controlling propaganda machine,” or corruption in “Putin’s” Russia, as if there were no historical precedents) without thinking about what the film actually says about power, and, furthermore, without wondering what Kolya’s plight has in common with that of, say, some Americans. (Zvyagintsev was reportedly inspired to make the film by the story of an American man who destroyed several buildings with a bulldozer after losing a zoning dispute.)

Second, it means that the film is still primarily validated by how much it embodies the myth of the dissident artist fighting against “the man.” This mode of validation demands from Westerners a kind of condescension and perpetual surprise that Russians are not as cowardly and politically passive as we might have expected, given that they have still not built the oasis of democracy and human rights that is America. And for Russian artists to be validated in this way, they have to desire essentially the same things as Americans do—individual freedom, whether it is free speech in Zvyagintsev’s case or private property in Kolya’s.

It would be a little too simplistic to say that the film only describes the Russian experience. Surely, Zvygintsev’s statements in interviews about how it represents the human experience of exchanging freedom for security in general, as well as the universal spiritual and political pretensions of his source material, might make one assume otherwise. But if you do see the film, try not to read any reviews beforehand, and forget this one as quickly as you can. You are better off thinking about the film in conjunction with Hobbes’ Leviathan or the Book of Job, if you want to understand its vision of political power—not just in Russia, but in any country.

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Nemtsov’s Assasination as Art Alex Braslavsky

Recently I had a conversation with a peer from my Russian class who said the following statement: “All art is political.” We had been discussing our plans for the summer. After I told him I was planning on studying abroad in Moscow for two months, the conversation quickly took a political turn, as is perhaps to be expected, considering how agitated the atmosphere in the Russian Federation has been in the past year. Though my intentions in going are not political whatsoever, I know it would be irresponsible for me to immerse myself in Russian culture without any consideration for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, the fall of the ruble, and the recent assassination of the charismatic political activist who condemned Putin, Boris Nemtsov.

Only hours after expressing public support for an upcoming march against Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, Nemtsov was crossing a bridge in sight of the Kremlin with his girlfriend, Ukrainian model Anna Durytskaya, when a mysterious vehicle drove up from behind and a figure jumped out, shooting Nemtsov in the back four times. In a late interview, Nemtsov had expressed fear that Putin would have him killed because of how active his opposition was to the war in Ukraine. In the wake of the tragedy, Mr. Putin was quick to condemn the murder, and investigation into the killing since was marked by haste. Only a week after Nemtsov’s death, Chechen suspects Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadayev were arrested. Evidence against the two detainees came about after the car was identified, and was pulled from security camera photos and phone bills. Nothing was mentioned about their possible personal motives for the murder, other than that they fit the profile of people who have organized Islamist attacks in Moscow in the last few decades. The inappropriate justification by stereotype is just another sign of how quickly the Russian Federation has leapt to categorize motives in what is a very distinct case. As part of a commission which inspected the conditions under which the suspects were being held, one of Russia’s leading human rights activists, Andrei Babushkin, attested to having seen wounds on Dadayev’s body that pointed to the possibility of his forced confession through torture. Dadayev himself reported having suffered from poor treatment by use of electricity. Even if Gubashev and Dadayev did carry out the deed, perhaps it will never be known who arranged for spilled blood from behind the scenes.

The peer sitting across from me listened as I told him that my parents were worried that I would be going to the homeland of my heritage at this particular time. My mother, who emigrated from Moscow to the United States in 1993, left Russia with the images of tanks lining the streets of Moscow during the constitutional crisis in her mind. Twenty-two years later, her warnings for me not to retort at every homophobic or sexist comment I may hear on the Moscow metro are, from my perspective, to be taken seriously.

The assassination of Boris Nemtsov has demonstrated that it is still not safe to speak out in Russia, and that “honest politics,” in the words of Nemtsov just hours before his death, are still needed there.

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It is difficult for any American to imagine the measure of hatred currently cultivated in Russia toward Westerners. That tensions are high in Russia, after all, is not anything new.

They have been for the last century. More than just a few assassinations of investigative journalists and critics opposed to Putin’s policies have taken place during the last decade.

The silencing of opposition is derivative of oppressive Soviet times, and it is no wonder it appears very retrograde to the international community. Corruption is constantly reiterating itself in Russia, under the mere guise of new monikers. And yet, in the wake of Nemtsov’s murder, Russian citizens are reminded of his life’s dedication to liberal reform; Nemtsov’s past criticism of the government’s luxurious behavior is suddenly more potent when set beside the infamous inexplicable disappearance of Putin for more than a week.

His death has also empowered many more to take a stand, sparking some specialists to believe that Western organizations like the CIA may have framed the assassination in order to stage successful internal dissent. At this point, the accused have been held responsible and stowed away, but regardless of who killed the man, his death is the loss of yet another free-thinking Russian individual who valued open discourse. Nemtsov was prolific and tireless. A nuclear scientist, father of four, and conservationist, he did not wait for anyone else to take initiative on the reforms he hoped to see come about.

The peer who sat across from me was offended at my passively academic belief that art could be “apolitical,” and for good reason. He was right, to a degree. Even if my hope is that I will be primarily studying poetry, seeing performances, and appreciating art whilst in Moscow, as my peer pointed out, I should not experience my heritage as a passive bystander to the political climate. As I write this in my sheltered dormitory, I remind myself that my great grandfather was sent to the Gulags for his writings. Especially in a place like Russia, such a rich artistic tradition cannot be detached from a thick historic hegemony.

There are artists whose intentions have been to construct their own worlds outside of the confines of political paradigms, but these desires will only ever be asymptotic by nature; never fully attainable and always derivative. The artist has a responsibility to hold up a mirror to the populace, not just to provide a portal for escape. Nemtsov did both.

While I am there, I would like to try to see the Russia that Nemtsov saw, even if it’s just a glimpse: I realize now that his vision was in itself a work of art, waiting to be appreciated.

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POLITICS AND

CULTURE With contributions from: Claudia Lahr • University of Michigan, Class of 2017 Susanna An • Amherst College, Class of 2014 Dalia Wolfson • Yale University, Class of 2017 Kate Seidel • Columbia College, Class of 2017

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Pagan Meets Christian: The Reading of Omens in the Primary Chronicle Claudia Lahr

The cultural and religious practices of Kievan Rus’ cannot be strictly categorized as being of Christian or pagan origin. While the Kievan state was nominally Christian since the baptism of Kiev in 988, undeniable hints of pre-Christian East Slavic “paganism” punctuate such famous works as the Primary Chronicle. These traces of the Kievan state’s pagan heritage often take the form of ominous occurrences and visions foretelling impending disaster, echoing back to a not-so-distant past in which divination by volkhvy (folk magicians) and the interpretation of signs and symbols was an integral part of faith and everyday life. In the Primary Chronicle, the juxtaposition of Christian references with pagan symbolism is representative of a syncretistic tradition. This synthesis of pagan symbolism retaining its meaning in a Christian world is a key element in Kievan texts. While omens, in the form of natural phenomena, are treated as bearing critical implications, other remnants of paganism, such as the work of magicians, are vigorously condemned.

The negotiation between Christianity and mysticism presents an interesting question for the reader to answer: which remnants of pre-Christian belief are accepted in ecclesiastical, elite Kiev, and why? The texts suggest that the reason for the acceptance of omens as a way of foretelling the future is because they can be integrated into Christianity as symbols of divine justice, and this fit into the power structure of Christianity, whereas the magicians or volkhvy represent a deviant element outside of this structure.

Throughout the Chronicle, unusual natural phenomena, which are thought to be inauspicious, occur and portend misfortunes that will befall Rus’. They often come before times of war or tribulation. In the year 1065 of the Chronicle before the ruler Vseslav goes to battle, the sky is described as turning red: At the time, there was a portent in the west in the form of an exceedingly large star with bloody rays, which rose out of the west after sunset. It was visible for a week and appeared with no good presage. Much internal strife occurred thereafter, as well as many barbarian incursions into the land of Rus’, for this star appeared as if it were made of blood, and therefore portended bloodshed. (Cross 144) The text goes on to explain that ill omens such as the red sky are not unique phenomena, but in fact hark back to extraordinary occurrences from the pre-Christian era. The Chronicle lists such sightings as having happened under the reigns of Antiochus, Nero, and others, concluding that, “Thus portents in the sky, or in the stars, or in the sun, or such as are made known by birds or from some other source, are not favorable import. Such signs are, on the contrary, of evil significance, presaging the appearance of war, famine, or

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death” (Cross 145). The compiler of the Chronicle uses evidence from the past to justify the accuracy of predicting future events based on nature. This type of divination is accepted as a valid practice throughout the Chronicle rather than as a transgression against Christian taboos on witchcraft and fortune telling.

The predictions appear to be justified by the belief that God, in His Omnipotence, controls all things. Thus, any unusual incidents are interpreted as signs from Him, expressing His divine will or representing His divine retribution for sin, in the tradition of the plagues unleashed upon Egypt in the Old Testament. The Chronicle describes that the accursed Sviatopolk, murderer of Princes Boris and Gleb, has had his bones “softened” as punishment for his crimes, and that his subsequent fleeing from Yaroslav is “pursued by the wrath of God[…] he died a miserable death[…] judgment thus rightly fell upon him as a sinner[…] and since his death he abides in bonds and in torment everlasting. His tomb is in the wilderness even to this day, and an evil odor issues forth from it” (Cross 133).

Though Sviatopolk died long before the writing of the Chronicle, his tomb is still marked with a disgusting odor. Thus, God’s will in punishing Sviatopolk’s corpse with a permanent stench is explained as the natural and proper penalty for his heinous crime.

The author does not leave the divinely ordained nature of Sviatopolk’s death open for debate. In his article “Divination and Providentialism in the ‘Primary Chronicle’ of Kievan Rus’,” Brian P. Bennett describes the divine plan that exists as the catalyst behind the events of the Chronicle as one that can be elucidated to some extent through the interpretations of these signs: “Though this plan is ultimately unfathomable, some insight into it can be gleaned through sacred writings, as well as through ‘signs’ such as comets and earthquakes and other preternatural phenomena thought to issue from God” (Bennett 379). In this context, the chronicler acts as an intermediary, translating the meanings of these episodes for the reader. The interpreter of these events and author of the Chronicle is most likely a clergyman, entrusted to contemplate the significance and implications of God’s actions.

The chronicler’s affiliation with the Church, which controlled most of the production of knowledge in Rus’, as well as the Church’s close ties to the apparatus of power, seems to be what gives him legitimacy and authority to draw meanings from these natural phenomena (Bennett 376).

The difference between legitimate religious authority and censored mysticism is made unambiguously clear in the Chronicle, as it contradicts itself on the subject of interpreting God’s will through nature. In dispersing and punishing a group of magicians claiming to know how to end a drought in the Suzdal’ area by “devil worship,” Yaroslav says, “In proportion to its sin, God inflicts upon every land hunger, pest, drought, or some other chastisement, and man has no understanding thereof ” (Cross 135). In preceding passages, the Chronicle’s author interprets God’s will through natural occurrences; however, Yaroslav claims that man cannot understand God’s actions. Bennett describes this as a double standard that condemns the volkhvy for divination in a text that frequently uses “a divinatory way of thinking” (Bennet 375). Whereas the monastic writer’s credibility stems from his affiliation with the Church, a powerful institution, the magicians represent something outside of the state’s hierarchy. The magicians’ possible influence on the actions and beliefs

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of the people represents a threat to the Church, which is trying to secure its position as the sole intermediary between man and God. To counteract and defend its place as interpreter of the divine, the author of the Chronicle censors other interpretations, such as those espoused by magicians. This struggle between folk belief and the will of the Church goes beyond myth and religion and into the realm of politics. Since the Church was the foundation of the “creation and maintenance of princely authority,” questioning the interpretation of the Church or preaching about omens outside of its auspices would represent a serious threat not only to the Church’s authority, but to the power of the Kievan state itself, which partly drew its political prerogative from the Church and its institutions (Bennett 377). To operate outside the margins of the Church, as the volkhvy do, is construed as a form of sedition; as something that must be suppressed with all possible force. Maintaining the Church’s mandate as God’s representative on Earth is of utmost importance to the chronicler and the state because of the great influence they had on the people’s minds.

Therefore, it is the duty of the modern reader to see beyond these depictions of magicians as devious and deceitful and the chronicler as correct and a rightful interpreter of meaning, and to delve deeper into the political import of divination in Kievan Rus’. The incidents of omens and divination in the Chronicle must be contemporarily evaluated with the Church’s regulation of pagan tradition, rather than just taken as an impartial account of the passing of the years in Rus’. From the discrepancies in the discussion of divination in the Primary Chronicle, it can be concluded that following the conversion of Rus’ to Christianity in 988, pre-Christian elements of divination were maintained because they could be made to fit into Christianity as symbols of divine will, leaving the magicians who had been the intermediaries of these signs no place in the Church hierarchy, thereby censured and demonized as a result. The legacy of pre-Christian practice mingling with Orthodox Christianity, or dvoeverie, is one that has preoccupied Russia to this day.

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Bennett, Brian. “Divination and Providentialism in the ‘Primary Chronicle’ of Kievan Rus.” The Slavonic and East European Review 83.3 (2005). Print.

Cross, Samuel Hazzard, and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 2012.

Print.

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Gender Equality in Central Asia Susanna An

One hundred eighty eight out of 195 countries have ratified the agreement formulated by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In ratifying this agreement, each nation is committed to implementing measures to end discrimination against women in all forms. The sad truth, however, is that though this official commitment exists, gender inequality is still prevalent throughout the world. Central Asia1 is one such region. Legally, gender equality2 does exist in the region.

Each of the Central Asian nations ratified the CEDAW agreement and with the exception of Kazakhstan’s, each Central Asian country’s constitution states that men and women are accorded the same rights. Gender reform in the region took place en masse starting in the 1920s under Soviet rule and quickly became a particularly contentious and, at times, violent issue. This may be attributed to Central Asia’s traditional treatment of gender relations, which was in stark contrast to the platform of gender equality officially supported by the Soviet Union.

The Soviet state instigated gender related policy changes throughout the USSR for the largely political and economic purposes of integrating and consolidating a one-party state.

Its failure to tackle gender equality issues on the cultural front precluded complete attainment of gender equality. While gender reforms undoubtedly improved overall gender equality in Central Asia, they simultaneously heightened the divide between the public and private spheres and, to a certain extent, entrenched women further into stereotyped gender roles. Specifically in Central Asia, actual achievement of gender equality was complicated by the region’s persistent patriarchal family traditions, which were heavily influenced by its ties to Islam as well as by other Soviet policies in the region: specifically, the policies which “assaulted” Islam, eventually relegating the religion to “unofficial” status (Khalid 103).

This paper explores the extent to which gender equality was achieved in Central Asia during the Soviet period and how Soviet gender reform policies affected Central Asian women. It first elaborates on and provides analysis on gender reforms implemented in the region. This is followed by an investigation of the role of Islam, its relationship to Soviet gender reforms, and how this relationship shaped the development of gender equality in Central Asia.

Central Asia presented special difficulties to the USSR’s gender reform agenda. The regime had trouble penetrating and destroying traditional associational networks. Unable to account for the persistence of certain cultural norms, the Soviet state’s gender equality policies seem to have, in certain respects, backfired.

1 Central Asia refers to the following five countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

2 Gender equality, as defined in this paper is the same rights and freedoms for men and women in both the public and private sphere.

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At first, the state did not rigorously intervene in Central Asian gender policies. The region was exempt from the new civil code of 1918, which turned marriage into a civil contract, recognized free union as equivalent to marriage, outlawed polygamy, and made divorce readily available to both partners. It was only in 1926 that the Soviet state initiated gender reform in Central Asia through the humjum campaign. Though a movement against gender inequality at its core, this campaign (and much of gender reform in Central Asia) was imbued with anti-religious sentiment. It sought to “emancipate” women from Islamic customs that the Soviet state perceived as oppressive. Traditions that were associated with Islam, such as bride price, were abolished and women were strongly encouraged to discard their head covers. Furthermore, new laws raised the official marrying age from nine to sixteen, gave women legal autonomy, and allowed divorce (Akiner). The campaign faced often, fatal resistance; many women and supporters of these reforms were killed, raped, or otherwise viciously attacked. Social ostracism also often followed suit, as unveiled women “were deemed to have brought shame and dishonor on their families, their neighborhoods, and Islam itself ” (Khalid 80). Additionally, as a response to the consequent reduction of men’s opportunities for martial, acquisitive, and hegemonic self-assertion in the public sphere, men tightened their control over the household realm in response, as an attempt to reassert patriarchal power (Massell).

Despite Central Asian society’s negative reaction to the gender reforms, the USSR continued to implement them. Why? While there is no single answer, it is helpful to begin by noting the Soviet state’s overarching goal: that of creating a consolidated socialist Union.

The achievement of this particular goal was measured against economic development (industrialization) and thus required the contribution of every single Soviet citizen. Soviet law called on both men and women alike to work in order to increase labor productivity.

Central Asia was far from a robustly industrialized state and faced a huge shortage in labor, especially as the influx of European workers migrating into the region slowed. Therefore, maximizing the work force was crucial to this region’s development.

According to one scholar, the Soviet state sought to utilize women in order to infiltrate the rather rigid Central Asian ruling structure by increasing the influence of the Communist party over a larger range of the population. In 1919, the state created the Zhenotdel, the Women’s Department of the Central Committee Secretariat. This department was tasked with raising awareness and support for the Socialist Party among the unorganized women in factories and villages throughout the Soviet Union. It was responsible for “teach[ing], mobiliz[ing], and politiciz[ing] local women […] draw[ing] them into the Party, trade unions, cooperative organizations and the soviets” (Ishkanian 478).

The Soviet government sought to undermine the Central Asian traditional social order.

It hoped to destroy existing family structures and the kinship system, both of which it perceived as potential entities to which Central Asians would pledge their loyalty instead of to the Soviet State. Women, particularly those of the working class and the peasantry, were believed to contribute to this goal, as the most consistently exploited and humiliated citizens in society (Kandiyoti 604). Massell explains, “It may be said, then, that Moslem women came to constitute in Soviet political imagination, a structural weak point in the

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traditional order: a potentially deviant and hence subversive stratum susceptible to militant appeal—in effect, a surrogate proletariat where no proletariat in the real Marxist sense existed” (1975: xxiii).

These efforts to draw Central Asian women into the public sphere inevitably granted them a more equal status in society. However, countering this gain in status was the state’s reinforcement of housekeeping and caring for the family and children as some of a Soviet woman’s most important duties. The Soviet state did not view its conflation of womanhood and the familial responsibility as an affirmation of gendered roles and re-entrenchment of women into the private sphere. Rather, it understood this duty as one of a productive Soviet citizen’s many social obligations. In a similarly paradoxical vein, the Soviet state’s gender policies upheld the assumption that the fundamental biological difference between males and females necessitated that women work in less strenuous conditions. Soviet law sought to facilitate this biological discrepancy. In both instances, focus was placed again on maximizing women’s contribution to social welfare and not on reconciling the centuries of gender-based marginalization.

The Soviet pro-natalist and pro-maternalist policies were well received by the Central Asian nations, a predominantly rural region that valued large families. Very many Central Asian women qualified for titles and awards that were given to those with at least seven children.3 Naturally, women took up jobs that allowed them to balance both their public and domestic duties. They sought jobs that offered shorter working hours, longer holidays, and easier access to consumer goods that were in limited supply. Particularly in Central Asia, the dearth of goods and services resulted in an increased reliance on domestic relationships as well as on wider kin networks to ensure that families had sufficient food and cash from salaries to meet their needs. More importantly, this resulted in women’s increased dependence on family and consequently the obligatory acquiescence to family rules, which were still very much patriarchal. While there were certainly women who took advantage of new Soviet state policies that encouraged their financial and personal independence, the lack of viable alternatives to domestic relationships often exposed these women to arguably worse conditions: “Marriage and divorce laws [in Central Asia]…encouraged men to repudiate the oldest and the least attractive of their wives, leaving them without economic or institutional support. Numerous women found themselves adrift, freed from stable if repressive family roles with no alternatives to prostitution and crime. Moreover, the creation of segregated organizational forms to penetrate segregated societies also had its negative side, perpetuating the differentiation of male and female roles in new conditions” (Lapidus 67).

Another major reason for the introduction of gender reforms in Central Asia was Islam’s strong presence in the region. Islam presented the Soviet regime with two major issues: its potential to buttress the development of a pan-Turkic or pan-Islamic identity (Akiner) and its significant influence in the domestic sphere garnered by emphasizing women’s duties to the home and to Islam. As such, the Soviet regime sought to utilize 3 The ‘Heroine Mother’ title was awarded to those with ten children or more; ‘Motherhood Glory’ awards were given to those with seven to nine children, see Kandiyoti 607.

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women to move Central Asia in a more secular direction and to conjointly infiltrate its ruling structures.

While Soviet assaults on Central Asian tradition succeeded in unveiling women and drawing them into the public sphere, when combined with Soviet attacks on Islam they did not bode well for Central Asian women. The anti-religious campaigns pursued by the Soviet state exacerbated the societal backlash against the emancipation of women.

They aimed to clearly define the line between small-scale domestic rituals and larger-scale observances that could invoke the establishment of an oppositional authority based on organized Islam. This strict regulation of Islam in Central Asia led to increased pressure on women to fulfill (and remain) in gender-stereotyped roles, as “guardians of the faith, of the inner values of the community faced with a hostile state” largely as otins, but also as mothers (Khalid 103). As women were still closely associated with the domestic domain and their activities were not as fastidiously scrutinized as those of their counterparts, they naturally became “privileged custodians of local custom and ethnic/national identity” (ElSolh and Marbro). “Feminization of tradition” redefined gender roles, which strengthened women’s relationships to the private sphere and further bolstered gender stereotypes.

With the abolishment of Muslim educational institutions, “the ranks of the carriers of Islamic knowledge denuded, and continuity with the past made difficult by changes in script, the family became the only site for the transmission of Islam [own emphasis]” (Khalid 82) and otins “continued to teach children in secret, but their role as reciters of prayers at life-cycle events became central. Older otins transmitted their knowledge and their status in private to their daughters or daughters-in-law [own emphasis]” (Khalid 82). The assault on Islam also resulted in heightened pressure on women to maintain national traditions and to preserve the honor of the community and its connection to Islam (Khalid 82).

While this situation undoubtedly placed peculiar burdens on Central Asian women and to some extent, further tied them to the private sphere, it cannot definitively be said that Islam’s increased reliance on women for its survival (and the survival of their values) resulted in a step backward for gender equality. It may actually be argued that this dependence empowered Central Asian Muslim women, giving them a principal place in the practice of Muslim ritual. This would later provide Muslim women with a greater voice in religious circles. With the start of re-islamization in post-soviet Central Asia and the consequent re-entrance of religion into the public sphere, women were allowed to participate in the circulation of competing interpretations of religious belief and practice” (Kandiyoti 611).

According to one scholar, this “re-islamization” (at least in Kazakhstan) meant that conservative customs traditionally associated with Islam were not observed. Women did face gender discrimination in the form of rejection from Islamic University, but contributed to the growth of home madrasas. These madrasas not only provide women with an opportunity to seek their own understanding and interpretation of Islam, but they also provide women with a congregational space for dialogue. This yet again reflects another potential positive impact of the strengthened relationship between women, the private

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sphere, and Islam which emerged during the Soviet Era. Similarly, in Uzbekistan, this relationship also resulted in increasing numbers of madrasa-trained women who joined the ranks of religious specialists. However, “women’s practices in Uzbekistan have begun to receive unfavorable attention from the religious establishment and from community leaders, including madrasa-trained women calling for more orthodox religious observance,” which suggests that though the status of these women may be advancing, they still face great prejudice (Kandiyoti 344).

The Soviet state’s emancipation of women indeed witnessed women’s increased access to the public sphere, but its policies affirmed existing gender-stereotypes. Women not only continued to bear the double burden of obligatory labor in the factories and farms as well as the expected attendance to household duties, but also took up the burden as “guardians of the [Muslim] faith.” The consequent entrenchment of Central Asian women further into the private sphere in some ways, barred the achievement of full gender equality. Despite this, women’s closer associations with Islam and the private sphere during the Soviet era seems to have actually helped propel them in some way to the public sphere in the post-Soviet era.

It is difficult to conclude the efficacy of Soviet gender reform agendas in Central Asia, for efficacy truly depends on what the regime’s goals entailed. The gender reforms introduced new social, political, economic, and familial structures, consequently engendering a now (theoretically) un-tethered reserve of human capital, to be utilized for the development of the Soviet economy and socialist union. In this sense, the Soviet state did succeed in attaining its aims for gender reform. However, when measured purely against the definition of gender equality, it seems that the state failed to engender complete gender parity.

The enormous emphasis placed on being a “productive Soviet citizen” did result in what, at the time, were revolutionary reforms for gender equality. Unfortunately, because these changes were based upon inherently gendered notions of societal roles and because they were implemented within a traditional culture dominated by male chauvinism (Lapidus 56), gender equality could not be attained. This was especially evident in Central Asia, where the dynamic between Soviet gender equality policies and Islam resulted in an undeniable improvement in women’s rights, accompanied by the strengthened ties of women to the private sphere and, in some ways, a growing affirmation and emphasis of gendered roles.

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Akiner, Shirin. “Between Tradition and Modernity - the Dilemma Facing Contemporary Central Asian Women.” Post Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia. Ed. Mary Buckley. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 261-304. Print.

Ishkanian, Armine. “VI. Gendered Transitions: The Impact Of The Post-Soviet Transition On Women In Central Asia And The Caucasus.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 2.3-4 (2003): 475-96. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 Nov. 2012.

Kandiyoti, Deniz. “The Politics Of Gender And The Soviet Paradox: Neither Colonized, Nor Modern?” Central Asian Survey 26.4 (2007): 601-23. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

Khalid, Adeeb. Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia. Berkeley: U of California, 2007. Print.

Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky. “Enabling Conditions of Sexual Equality: Affirmative Action, Soviet Style.” Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change.

Berkeley: U of California, 1978. 123-198. Print.

Massell, Gregory J. The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974. Print.

Muslim Women’s Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality. Ed. Camillia Fawzi El-Solh and Judy Mabro. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1994. Print.

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Looking Inside the Streetcar: Travel and Self-Progress in Balabanov’s Brother Dalia Wolfson

St. Petersburg has a rich history as a city of infinite interpretation and tension, to the point of possessing its own “St. Petersburg text.” George Gibian identifies several categories that Russian cities occupy in the national prose, including the city as octopus, the city as a big village, the city as site of factories and research institutes, and the city as the locale of perennial ethical dilemmas. Yet perhaps the most compelling is Gibian’s fifth category: city of white nights, dreamers, and seekers, as demonstrated in director Aleksei Balabanov’s 1997 film Brother, where “the city functions as the stimulus to, and setting of, self-analysis and reveries” (Gibian 43, 47). In Brother, main character Danila’s arrival in St. Petersburg “is the meeting of the protagonist with the city, [in which he] comes to the city from outside to conquer it [and] enters into a certain interaction with the city and its dwellers” (Bratova 123). A city’s system of transportation represents growth, motion, and dynamism—an opportunity for external and psychological interaction with the city itself.

In particular, the tram presents Danila with an opportunity for change and introspection which he ignores, refusing to deepen his shallow interaction with St. Petersburg. Danila’s failure to “travel” on the tram is paralleled by a psychological refusal to make any form of mental journey by engaging in reflection. Ultimately, Danila’s inability to internalize the idea of travel (with its awareness of arrival, destination, and path) results in his moral paralysis.

The most prominent mechanisms for travel in the city space of St. Petersburg prove to be unsuccessful as vehicles of a journey or places of reflection. The notion of privacy in cars is corrupted by other elements inherent to driving; in Brother, cars are loci of intrigue and are involved in plotting and hiding from threats. The presence of the St. Petersburg subway is glaringly absent from the film as all filming is aboveground. The only remaining form of transportation, then, is the streetcar, a prominent vehicle in Brother which figures as a visual motif, plot device, and thematic element.

As Adams Caroll observes in his thesis, streetcars are characterized by “communal experience: there is no private space or property involved with mass transit” (Caroll 10).

Meanwhile, the possibility for change in this communal space—greater social cohesion or a mixing of disparate cultures in the post-Soviet world—exists, but goes entirely unfulfilled. Instead, the tram itself becomes a place of criminal disruption of state authority. In Brother, the tram is the site of threats and challenges to the law: the provincial Russians refuse to pay their fare in front of the helpless, unassertive tram conductor, Sveta. Later, Sveta is bullied and harassed by gangsters as she drives her tram through the city. Moreover, as a form of public transit representing consistency (in route and schedule), the tram is constantly plagued by interruptions of violence and corruption. Thus, the possibility of the tram representing order or social integration in the post-Soviet environment is minimal.

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Unlike other spaces in Brother, however, the tram holds a redemptive potential. In the first incident onboard the tram, a challenge to the conductor’s authority presents a chance to restore order. Yet these two moments are not defined by a successful transformation.

Instead, Danila resorts to his gun as an agent of dispensing justice: instead of permanently establishing order, this solution is terror-inducing, temporary, and ultimately an inappropriate reaction. While Danila’s Robin Hood act appears to stem from a noble urge, his resort to using the silently aimed gun is an adoption of criminal methods rather than a rejection; in the pursuit of his own sense of justice, Danila only contributes to the destabilization of the law.

In the second instance, it is the tram (along with its driver, Sveta) that saves Danila from the bullets of his pursuers. The tram rescues Danila, providing him with an opportunity to reflect and form new relationships. The brilliant possibility of change is particularly salient, as the shot that injures Danila as he is saved causes illness—a situation in which Danila exists in vulnerable state. Sweat-soaked and feverish, Danila asks Hoffman, “Tell me, German, what do we live for?” But Danila’s next question is “Do you have a girlfriend?” and thereafter the topic of existential meaning is lost. Subsequently, Danila shows no explicit modification of behavior, and the relationship that ensues with Sveta does not alter his violent problem-solving methods.

Thus, even as the tram presents an opportunity for the internal readjustment of his notions of justice and psychological reflection, Danila is unable to redeem these chances in order to literally and figuratively travel beyond his mindset. This particular inability to find a transcendent morality and change is paralleled in Balabanov’s use of the streetcar as a visual motif. Sveta’s streetcar in itself is peculiar: it is in total disrepair, and empty of seats and other accoutrements on the inside. In long shots that patiently scan the streets of St. Petersburg, Sveta’s streetcar frames miniature landscapes. As Natalia Bratova observes, the endless restlessness and vacancy of the vehicle resembles the character of Danila: “The picture postcard shots of the city have a symbolic meaning because they add to the character of Danila as a person with no roots and no inner pivot which might keep him from the crimes he later succeeds in committing” (Bratova 124). Additionally, as Jane Day comments, the “frame of the car mimics a strip of film,” indicating Danila’s retreat from actual engagement with either the city or himself (Day 617). In addition, the actual experience of riding a streetcar is by definition disengaged from a direct encounter with the city: “The street, previously experienced firsthand at a walking pace, is presented as a series of images from behind glass” (Carroll 3).

The development of the streetcar theme ultimately presents Danila as being in a symbolic state of paralysis. Though he encounters two opportunities for psychological, moral change (in confronting the bullying passengers or reevaluating his lifestyle after a neardeath escape), Danila maintains his violent habits and stoic demeanor. Though there is a redemptive potential for travel and transcendence of the current self in the streetcar, Danila does not succeed in fulfilling it. Instead of a destination where Danila can reflect and make introspective progress, the tram and the city at large become “a disorienting dream space whose physical map reflects disordered emotional and psychological landscapes […] it is largely devoid of movement and life save for the inexplicable progress of

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empty trams and trains” (Day 613). Yet even the notion of actual progress is not substantiated for the majority of the film. Indeed, the streetcar becomes a symbol of paralysis and cyclicality. The post-Soviet image of the tram in particular is bleak and backward: these vehicles cause further congestion in the choked streets of St. Petersburg, and weekend operation is even cancelled in 1992 (Carroll 14). With its limited, circular, rigid route, the streetcar’s literal path is not a model for dynamic, innovative journeying. Additionally, the streetcar is physically paralyzed by crony power, in the scene where the camera suddenly shifts to a front seat view of the Russian mafia stopping the tram’s path. Danila is similarly paralyzed, unable to engage with himself or his environment so as to advance beyond his current identity and morals.

Danila is a rootless character in a rootless city, incapable of achieving the progress that is enabled by nostalgia, when the individual reflects on his relocation and past. Danila’s inability to engage with a literal and figurative sense of progress is linked to his psychological situation. In the post-Soviet psyche, progress is enabled by the mechanism of referring to the past; in a sense, a transportation and relocation of the mind. This particular form of journey is achieved through nostalgia, “understood as the attempt to restore a lost sense of connectedness and a quest for wholeness in the relationship between the world and oneself ” (Pourtova 40). Elena Pourtova writes that nostalgia is successful when the individual engages with its “regressive aspect” so that “the past and the present can be taken into the personality and form an integrated vector for the future” (Pourtova 48). Yet Balabanov does not show Danila’s journey from his hometown to St. Petersburg, choosing instead to only show the destination-centered scene of a train arriving at the station. Upon reaching the city, Danila enters into Balabanov’s St. Petersburg, characterized by “rootless and enduring strangeness” (Day 612). Danila lacks a sense of nostalgia for family: he quickly distributes gifts for his brothers to strangers, and mentions his mother only when he irreverently dismisses his treacherous brother, who tells him to return home. Danila also avoids speaking of his military experience, and is fiercely, persistently forward-oriented, always moving without turning back. Just as Danila resists engaging with external modes of travel, he also resists any mental exploration.

Despite Danila’s paralysis and inability to self-reflect as his constant forward motion prevents him from moral progress, the very end of the film is surprisingly hopeful, a scene rich with potential, enabled by a new form of transportation: a passing truck. There are many optimistic, new visual elements: bright colors (the green of the stripe on the dashboard, for example, represents forward movement and youth); the clean, sparkling snow; and Danila’s wide, childish grin. The truck also possesses a measure of privacy absent in the film’s cars, trams, streets, or apartments. There is a strong theme of a journey beginning: Danila turns the radio on and the music corresponds to his life as the broadcaster dedicates the song to «тем, которые сейчас находятсья в пути.»1 The truck also hosts both memory and a feeling of the familiar: the truck driver has a photo of him and his partner (the last photos in the film were shown in the mother’s photo album) and there is a fraternal comfort between the driver and Danila, a casual ease of conversation foreign 1 “This is for the ones on the road”

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to the film. Moreover, there is a positive nostalgia in the music itself, which is an upbeat cover of the more menacing Nautilus Pompilius song “People on the Hill,” which plays when Danila first arrives in St. Petersburg.

This last scene is thus deeply uncharacteristic of the entire film, which is populated by negative symbols of travel and transportation. Why, then, does Brother end on such an optimistic note? How can this final scene be justified thematically? Having abandoned the unfulfilled potential and decay of St. Petersburg with its “green stained statues, ghostly apparitions, run-down buildings and entry-ways, fog, gray despair and violence,” Danila receives a second opportunity: if the city and all its elements serve as a framework for psychological development and “direct the consciousness of its inhabitants,” then Moscow truly represents a new beginning (Knox 139, Carroll 2). Danila’s toothy grin at the movie’s end is thus optimistic and represents the fact that he is finally attempting to understand the idea of conducting his own journey, as he replies to the trucker’s question «А кем быть-та хочешь?» with «Я-та? Не знаю. Шофером.» 2 Boris Pasternak describes St. Petersburg in Doctor Zhivago as “incessantly moving and roaring outside our doors and windows, is an immense introduction to the life of each of us” (quoted in Gibian 40). Much of St. Petersburg’s “moving and roaring” is generated by its transportation, a combination of cars and trams that carry their passengers from place to place. Yet for the viewers of Brother, the city does not serve as an introduction to the dynamism of Danila’s life, but rather to his closed, paralyzed state. The trams of the city present him with opportunities for self-progress, but instead Danila refuses to change.

Balabanov manipulates his portrayal of streetcars to match Danila’s vacant and closed inner life, paralleled by their routes and image as they drive through the city. Danila’s lack of engagement with the transformative potential of travel is mirrored by his lack of nostalgia (forward-back travel) and psychological progress. Unable to internalize the notion of a journey, Danila is paralyzed and unsuccessful in moving forward morally and forming a deeply rooted, conscientious identity—at least until the last scene, which hints that Danila may be on a journey of self-contemplation and moral repair at last.

•

2 “Who do you want to be?” “Me? I don’t know. A driver.”

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Balabanov, Aleksei. Brother. Kino International Corp., 1997. Film.

Bratova, Natalia. “The Myth of St Petersburg in the Contemporary Russian Cinema.

Balabanov’s Brother.” CFE Conference Paper Series 3 2008: 122-126. 17 April 2014.

Carroll III, Adams Pope. Уезжает последний трамвай: The Symbology of the Streetcar in 20th Century Russian Literature. B.A. Thesis. Reed College, 2009. Web. Google.

18 April 2014.

Day, Jennifer. “Strange Spaces: Balabanov and the Petersburg Text.” The Slavic and East European Journal 49.4 Winter 2005: 612-625. Google Scholar. Web. 15 April 2014.

Gibian, George. “The Urban Theme in Recent Soviet Russian Prose: Notes Toward a Typology.” Slavic Review 37.1 Mar. 1978: 40-50. JSTOR. Web. 17 April 2014.

Knox, Jane. “On The Road.” Russian Review 63.1 Jan. 2004: 128-143. Google Scholar. Web. 15 April 2014.

Pourtova, Elena. “Nostalgia and Lost Identity.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 58 2013: 34-51. Google Scholar. Web. 18 April 2014.

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State-Building in Georgia after the Rose Revolution: Institutional Reform, Political Contestation, and Constituency Kate Seidel

The states of the former Soviet Union vary widely in their ability to exercise control over their territory and the institutions that they inherited from the Soviet Union. Georgia, a country that had long been among the most fragile states of the former Soviet Union began to significantly reverse this long decline in 2003, when the Rose Revolution led to the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze and the election of young, Western-educated Mikheil Saakashvili. What was it about this turnover in government that made it possible for the Georgian state to begin to recover from civil war, widespread corruption, and insolvency? And why did Ukraine, a country with similar levels of economic and political development and a similar turnover in government turnover as Georgia, fail to recover? I find that decreased political polarization in Georgia, combined with the dependence of incoming leaders on support from the state and from parts of the Georgian public who would benefit from such reforms, facilitated a period of significant but limited reforms designed to strengthen the state. In Ukraine, where there was higher contestation between politicians, lawmakers did not depend on state-building programs to retain public support; thus, there was a lack of opportunity and initiative for the members of the Orange Revolution’s coalition to push through such reforms.

The Character of Reform in Georgia In the 1990s, the Georgian state was seriously weakened by civil war and economic decline. Among the former Soviet states, Georgia saw the largest drop in tax revenue as a percentage of GDP from 1991 to 1995: it shrunk 29 percentage points to reach a low of 2 or 3 percent of GDP in 1993. Although Ukraine also experienced economic decline, the state’s collection of tax revenue remained roughly constant throughout the 1990s (38% in 1991 and in 1998) and indicated no such danger of state collapse (IMF Staff Team).

The quality of state institutions (as assessed by the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators on a scale of -2.5 to 2.5) reflects the significant reforms made in Georgia after the Rose Revolution: in Georgia, regulatory quality was about -.7 at time of revolutions; in the next five years, it rose to .1 (as a point of comparison, it fell from -.7 to -.8 in Ukraine.) Tax revenue as a percent of GDP shows how these states’ capacity to collect resources from their citizens changed: it more than tripled in Georgia (increasing from 7% to 24%) in the five years following the Rose Revolution (but hardly changed in Ukraine increasing from 13% to only 16%).

After coming to power following the Rose Revolution and Eduard Shevardnadze’s resignation, Mikheil Saakashvili and a parliament dominated by his party, the United

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National Movement, pushed through significant and wide-ranging reforms to Georgia’s economic and governing institutions. Before, the Georgian bureaucracy was full of duplicate agencies; low salaries for officials did nothing to deter widespread corruption; and the hiring processes for government jobs were opaque and based on connections rather than qualifications (Machavariani). The new government reduced the number of ministries, collected the taxes it was owed, and increased salaries for government workers.

Significant reforms to the structure of the police, like the creation of a new force of patrol police and redesign of the police training program (Kupatadze et al.) reduced corruption and increased public trust in the police force. The Georgian tax code was consolidated, reducing the number of taxes from over twenty to seven and instituting a flat income tax (Papava). Tax enforcement became much more efficient and reduced the size of the shadow economy (Torosyan and Filer). The reforms to the bureaucracy were mostly successful in restructuring incentives for government workers, or at least in instilling a fear of being accused of corruption (Schueth). The new government also prioritized the provision of roads and electricity to poor, rural areas.

There were, however, limits to the extent of Saakashvili’s reforms. The hiring and promotion processes, at least for mid- and upper-level positions in government service, are still opaque. The Georgian judiciary remains weakly independent, at least when it comes to making decisions with political consequences. Nor could all of these state-strengthening projects could be attributed to a desire for democratic transparency or economic reform: until the IMF pressured the government to stop, it had a program of collecting “compensation” for alleged corruption and theft from the state perpetrated by Shevardnadze-era officials. (It was not clear who decided whether or not officials were guilty of corruption, and how much compensation they should pay; nor was it clear whether or not all of this money reached the rather mysterious fund for which it was designated.)

An effective explanation of why reform took place in Georgia should also make sense of why such reforms took the shape they did. These reforms were far reaching and effective, and focused on providing public goods, reforming institutions, and strengthening the state. However, they were made through centralized processes and not designed to increase the accountability of the higher levels of bureaucracy to the people themselves.

Possible Causes of Reform In order to understand the reforms that took place in Georgia after the Rose Revolution, it would be instructive to compare them to the lack of significant economic and state-building reform in Ukraine. In 2004, Ukraine was apparently given the same opportunity as Georgia to change its history of corruption, economic decline, and semi-authoritarian government, but little came of it. In this section, I consider possible underlying conditions that would explain the divergence in outcomes—the effectiveness of state-building through economic and institutional reform—between Georgia and Ukraine after the Rose and Orange Revolutions also explain why the reforms achieved in Georgia took the form they did.

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An important factor in encouraging the reform of state institutions is democratic accountability. Venelin Ganev identifies one of the main threats to state strength in post-communist countries as the state’s own wealth: because the state is the main source of wealth in a planned economy, it does not have to worry about extracting resources from its citizens, and instead becomes a source of extracted capital for its own elites. One of the advantages of democracy is that it provides accountability for elites and allows the public to make their demands for a well-functioning state heard. For example, in State Building in Putin’s Russia, Brian Taylor shows that in the absence of external monitoring and an ethic of commitment to public service, it was hard to significantly reform the security services in the earlier years of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

However, it doesn’t seem that the level of democracy present in Ukraine and Georgia before the Orange and Rose revolutions would account for this divergence in outcomes, since it was fairly comparable in both countries. It is also not clear that the revolutions themselves represent a sustained democratic breakthrough in either Georgia or Ukraine (Way, “Color Revolutions”). For these reasons, I will not discuss the effects of democracy on reforms to strengthen state capacity in Georgia and Ukraine.

In the elections following the Rose and Orange revolutions, respectively, Saakashvili was elected to the presidency with 96% of the vote; Yushchenko, with 52%. This can be understood as a reflection of the polarized political climate of Ukraine, as well as the “massive public dissatisfaction” (Papava 660) in Georgia that stemmed from the failure of the Shevardnadze government to pay wages and pensions and effectively run the state.

Political polarization could have an impact on the ability of the winners of the revolution to push through reforms and shape political institutions to their advantage (EBRD Transition Report). Also, Timothy Frye argues that low polarization can facilitate state-building and economic reform in democracies because it provides a favorable environment for businesses to invest, since they are less afraid of economic policy reversal.

Thus, the government is able to collect more taxes and provide public goods or make payments to the dependent sector of the population in order to win their support, instead of having to give out rents to other elites in return for their allegiance. Low polarization in Georgia might make reform possible by allowing institutional change, which would in turn help the government cultivate the support of the dependent sector of the population.

Political polarization and turnover in government are also associated with the character of national identity in post-communist countries. The presence (and prevalence) of anti-Soviet national identity has been linked to the exit of the Communist Party from power in the first free elections after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (Darden and Grzymala-Busse), and also to the likelihood of revolution in particular countries (Kuzio, “Nationalism, identity and civil society”; Bunce; Way, “Authoritarian State Building”).

Both Georgian and Ukrainian national identities share an anti-Soviet sentiment.

Political cleavages related to regional, ethnic, or linguistic identities can also be a source of political polarization (Frye 144–167); in the Orange Revolution, for example, many supporters of the revolution were connected by “symbolic capital,” or common regional, cultural, and linguistic identities that, when mobilized through the revolution, translated into support for certain political leaders and parties (Beissinger). It is worth keeping in

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mind that in Georgia and Ukraine, which are both ethnically diverse, the discourse of inclusive, civic nationalism had long been predominant on both sides by the time of the color revolutions (Jones; Kuzio, “Kravchuk to the Orange Revolution”). We might expect to see that the kinds of “symbolic capital” that elites use to mobilize support in Georgia and in Ukraine reflect their previous legacies of contested national ideas and increase or decrease political polarization.

Political Polarization and Elite Strategy In this section, I aim to trace two of the ways that political polarization at the time of the colored revolutions in Georgia shaped state-building outcomes. I look at the sources of support for revolutionary coalitions in Georgia and Ukraine and the way in which this affects their motivation to pursue state-building reform, as well as the way that political contestation affected institutional change in Georgia and Ukraine by allowing changes to the role of the president and the legislature.

In Lincoln Mitchell’s story of the Rose Revolution, Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia’s Rose Revolution, it was Mikheil Saakashvili’s ability to appeal to groups other than well-educated young people in Tbilisi that gave him a decisive advantage over other leading opposition figures in the Rose Revolution, such as Zurab Zhvania and Nino Burjanadze. Saakashvili’s National Movement “was the only party that sought to campaign in Kvemo Kartli [a region dominated by Azeris, an ethnic minority in Georgia], rather than write the entire region off to massive government-backed election fraud.

Saakashvili’s attempt to campaign there was publicized throughout Georgia and further increased support for his party” (Mitchell 56). This was apparently effective, and poor and minority areas of Georgia displayed continued support for Saakashvili and his reforms.

In Julie George’s analysis of minority voting patterns in Georgia, she finds that elections in ethnic minority districts tended to be less fraudulent during Saakashvili’s time as president, and that their voting patterns were correlated with income levels, as well as the greater attention they were given in campaigns by the United National Movement (even after 2004, when it was in power) compared to opposition parties.

Was the UNM’s decision to appeal to ethnic minorities made possible by the lower level of political polarization in Georgia, or did it itself help to realize a more inclusive idea of civic nationalism, thus reducing the possibility of political divisions along ethnic lines?

Perhaps the former was the case after the UNM came to power, but it seems that, at least in the initial stages of gathering support for the revolutionary movement, Saakashvili’s decision to seek support from poor, ethnic minority voters was important. Not only did it give him an advantage over other leading opposition figures at the time of the revolutions (allowing his government to avoid the tensions between different parties, leaders, and political views found in Ukraine’s Orange Revolutionary movement), but, when he came to power, it motivated him to push through state-building reforms in order to help poor voters in return for continued support. Saakashvili’s state-building project was then facilitated by the decreased levels of political contestation in Georgia —not only by the structural lack of coherent political parties with sources of support in society, but because

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he reduced the likelihood of contestation on regional grounds by promoting inclusive civic nationalism in order to seek support from ethnic minorities.

In Ukraine, both opposition and incumbent parties had very strong regional and cultural affiliations (Bessinger), not only because anti-Soviet nationalism was more contested in Ukraine, but also because the early transition period had created sources of wealth outside the state; politicians were able to wield influence through the support of local oligarchs (Transition Report 50). Before Saakashvili’s UNM, all of Georgia’s dominant parties had collapsed once the president with whom they were affiliated left office; they had no base outside the central government. Thus, Saakashvili and his government had little opportunity for continued political and financial support outside the state (Saakashvili himself was a young lawyer, not an oligarch), and little opportunity for extracting resources from the very weak Georgian state itself. Instead, they were driven to pass such state-building reforms in order to receive support from the public while simultaneously consolidating their own power.

One of the clearest ways that polarization shaped the power of the new governments to effect reform was through constitutional changes that redefined the powers of the president and the legislature. In Ukraine, the massive protests surrounding the Orange Revolution helped existing elites to better understand the balance of power between them, and allowed the creation of a deal between the outgoing supporters of Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych, and the leaders of the Orange Revolution coalitions, Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko (Kudelia). In return for a non-fraudulent repeat of the presidential elections, the opposition agreed to support a constitutional amendment that reduced the president’s powers and increased those of the parliament (where they were soon to face opposition from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions). In Georgia, on the other hand, Saakashvili had no need to compromise with outgoing supporters of Shevardnadze; parliament amended the constitution to create a cabinet and a powerful prime minister (to be appointed by the president) and allow the president to dissolve parliament if it rejects the budget he proposes three times (Mitchell 79–80).

Conclusion Previous patterns of political polarization affected the capacity of the governments that came to power in the Rose and Orange revolutions to reform state institutions through defining the structure of the constitution and predicting the continued power of other political parties. Nationalism makes an appearance in elite strategies: though there was consensus on the value of civic nationalism in both Ukraine and in Georgia, only in Georgia did an opposition party decide (or need) to use this idea to gain support in regions with ethnic minorities. In Georgia, the dependence of incoming elites on support from the state and from those parts of the Georgian public who would benefit from reforms facilitated a period of significant but limited reforms designed to strengthen the state. In Ukraine, there was higher political contestation and lower motivation for the new government to push through such reforms.

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Even given the opportunity to pass reforms, why was it that Saakashvili’s government in Georgia decided to do so? One of the harder questions to answer within the temporal scope of this analysis is the relationship between state-building and democracy in Georgia and Ukraine. How can we distinguish between the kind of political consensus and accountability to the public that would facilitate state building once Mikheil Saakashvili became president of Georgia, and the lack of political contestation that is characteristic of autocratic or semi-autocratic regimes that would not necessarily encourage such change?

It is possible that low levels of polarization initially facilitated reforms in Georgia and then gave way to a period of autocratic consolidation. Nonetheless, no such consolidation was achieved. Despite attempts to stifle the opposition, the Georgian Dream coalition, and stop its leader, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, from becoming prime minister, Saakashvili accepted the defeat of the UNM in the 2012 parliamentary elections and left the presidency after his second term, as stipulated in the constitution. The United National Movement seems to have become a coherent opposition party, instead of falling apart like previous Georgian ruling parties; democracy seems more consolidated in Georgia now than before the Rose Revolution or during Saakashvili’s tenure. Political turnover in Ukraine, on the other hand, has certainly remained contested, but right now, strong political divisions along regional lines have aligned with polarizing external pressures and the threat of Russian military aggression to put the state in real danger. It remains to be seen how reform achieved in Georgia, as well as the inability of the government in Ukraine to effect such change, may predict the continuing strength of the state and of democracy in the two countries.

• Beissinger, Mark R. “The Semblance of Democratic Revolution: Coalitions in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.” American Political Science Review 107 (2013):574–592. Web. 8 Apr 2014.

Bunce, Valerie. “Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the Postcommunist Experience.” World Politics 55(2003):167–192. Web. 25 Mar 2014.

Cheasty, Adrienne. “The Revenue Decline in the Countries of the Former Soviet Union.”

Finance & Development (June 1996): 32–35. Web. Darden, Keith and Anna Grzymala-Busse. 2006. “The Great Divide: Literacy, Nationalism, and the Communist Collapse.” World Politics 59:83–115. Web. 5 Feb 2014.

Frye, Timothy. Building States and Markets After Communism: The Perils of Polarized Democracy. New York: Cambridge, 2010. Print.

Ganev, Venelin I. “Post-communism as an episode of state building: A reversed Tillyan perspective.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 38 (2005): 425–445. Web. 5 Feb 2014.

George, Julie A. “Can Hybrid Regimes Foster Constituencies? Ethnic minorities in Georgian elections, 1992–2012.” Electoral Studies (forthcoming). Web. 20 Mar 2014.

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Hale, Henry E. “Regime Cycles: Democracy, Autocracy, and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia,” World Politics 58 (2005): 133–165. Web. 8 Apr 2014.

Jones, Stephen. “Georgia: Nationalism from under the rubble.” After Independence: Making and protecting the nation in postcolonial & postcommunist states. Ed. Lowell W. Barrington. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006. 248–276. Print.

Kudelia, Serhiy. “Betting on Society: Power Perceptions and Elite Games in Ukraine.”

Orange Revolution and Aftermath: Mobilization, Apathy, and the State in Ukraine.

Ed. Paul J. Anieri. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010. 160–189.

Print.

Kupatadze, Alexander, George Siradze, and Giorgi Mitagvaria. “Policing and police reform in Georgia.” Organized Crime and Corruption in Georgia. Ed. Louise Shelley, Erik R. Scott, and Anthony Latta. London: Routledge, 2007. 93–110. Print.

Kuzio, Taras. “Kravchuk to the Orange Revolution: The Victory of Civic Nationalism in Post-Soviet Ukraine.” After Independence: Making and protecting the nation in postcolonial & postcommunist states. Ed. Lowell W. Barrington. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006. 187–224. Print.

Kuzio, Taras. “Nationalism, identity and civil society in Ukraine: Understanding the Orange Revolution.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 43(2010): 285–296.

Web. 19 Apr 2014.

Machavariani, Shalva. “Overcoming economic crime in Georgia through public service reform.” Organized Crime and Corruption in Georgia. Ed. Louise Shelley, Erik R. Scott, and Anthony Latta. London: Routledge, 2007. 37–49. Print.

Mitchell, Lincoln. Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia’s Rose Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008. Print.

Papava, Vladimer. “The Political Economy of Georgia’s Rose Revolution.” Orbis 50 (2006):657–667. Web. 20 Mar 2014.

Schueth, Samuel. “Apparatus of capture: Fiscal state formation in the republic of Georgia.” Political Geography 31 (2012):133–143. Web. 20 Mar 2014.

Staff team led by Liam Ebrill and Oleh Havrylyshyn. “Tax Reform in the Baltics, Russia, and Other Countries of the Former Soviet Union.” Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1999. Web. 6 Apr 2014.¬Taylor, Brian D. State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism. New York: Cambridge, 2011. Print.

Torosyan, Karine, and Randall K. Filer. “Tax reform in Georgia and the size of the shadow economy.” Economics of Transition 22 (2014): 179–210. Web. 3 Apr 2014.

Transition Report 2013. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, October 2013. Web. 1 Mar 2014.

Way, Lucan. “Authoritarian State Building and the Sources of Regime Competitiveness in the Fourth Wave: The Cases of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine,” World Politics 57(2005): 231–261. Web. 25 Mar 2014.

Way, Lucan. “The Real Causes of the Color Revolutions.” Journal of Democracy 19 (2008): 55–69. Web. 8 Apr 2014.

PHOTO GRAPHY With contributions from: Agnė Radavičiutė • University of Michigan 2015 Bianka Ukleja • Yale University, Class of 2018 Heloise Tailliet • Columbia College, Class of 2018 Ainsley Katz • Columbia College, Class of 2018

Agnė Radavičiutė, Folklore

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clockwise from top right: Heloise Taillet, Ainsley Katz, Parliament and Two Ladies

by Bianka Ukleja

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Ainsley Katz

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Lvov Bianka Ukleja

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Boats on the Vltava and Swans by Bianka Ukleja

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Heloise Taillet

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Ainsley Katz

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Ainsley Katz

Ainsley Katz

LITERARY CRITICISM With contributions from: Razi Shaban • Swarthmore College, Class of 2016 Elizabeth Drooby • Binghamton University, Class of 2015 Hannah Fagin • University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2017 Cathy Shen • Yale University, Class of 2017

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“What Can Be Done?”: Sonya’s Suffering and the Power of the Word Razi Shaban In his Lectures on Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov describes the redemption scene in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment as the novel’s “flaw, the crack in it” (Nabokov 110). The scene in question figures in part four, chapter four of Dostoevsky’s work, in which Raskolnikov goes to Sonya’s apartment and together they read the New Testament. Nabokov writes off the novel as a whole as “long-winded, terribly sentimental, and badly written,” but views this particular chapter as occupying a pivotal position in the text (Nabokov 110). In stark contrast, the pioneering Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin views Crime and Punishment as being of great importance, to the point that much of his work Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics focuses on this novel. In contrasting Nabokov’s reading of the chapter with a Bakhtinian interpretation, and by focusing on the dialogue that shapes this integral chapter, Sonya’s suffering will be analyzed through the various discourses Dostoevsky uses to construct a theodicy. Nabokov’s criticism of the chapter zeroes in on one sentence at its end. Up to this point, he says, the chapter is “[s]o far so good” (Nabokov 110). But w the following sentence, Nabokov declares, Dostoevsky has crossed a line: The candle-end had long been burning out in the bent candlestick, casting a dim light in this destitute room upon the murderer and the harlot strangely come together over the reading of the eternal book. (Dostoevsky 328) This “singular sentence” is, to Nabokov, marked by “sheer stupidity” (Nabokov 110).

While it is true that the sentence is both “crude and […] inartistic” in its forced, clichéd moralizing, Nabokov misses an important point in picking on this “one gust of false eloquence” (Nabokov 110). This “false eloquence” that Nabokov so triumphantly decrees as evidence of a “typical Dostoevskian rhetorical twist” feels distinctly out of place in the text—in the paragraph, the sentence presents itself as coming from a foreign voice (Nabokov 110).

Nabokov fails to distinguish what Mikhail Bakhtin saw so clearly: that Crime and Punishment is a text of multiple discourses, a text composed of not one but many voices which articulate different ideologies.1 Bakhtin describes Crime and Punishment as a polyphonic novel, a novel marked by a “plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices” (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics 6).

Nabokov’s error is to take one discourse as representative of the text as a whole, instead of 1 While Nabokov had the opportunity to read Bakhtin’s work, “neither author seemed aware of the other’s work.” See Foster, John Burt. Nabokov’s Art of Memory and European Modernism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Pages 106-109.

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as a part of it.

At the surface, the chapter consists almost entirely of conversation between Sonya and Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov, having said goodbye to his family, rushes to Sonya’s apartment and explains that he “came to say one word to [her]” (Dostoevsky 316). In the dialogue that follows, Raskolnikov channels a variety of discourses. These different voices are marked into three sections, broken up by “five minute” pauses that mark breaks in the dialogue (Dostoevsky 321, 328). While a cursory reading of the chapter would not ascribe particular importance to these breaks, appearing simply as opportunities for the characters to process their conversation, these breaks mark measured, substantive shifts in content and tone.

In the first section of the chapter, Raskolnikov asks Sonya a series of succinct questions about her life. Her responses grow in length and depth as Raskolnikov begins to ask crueler and crueler questions. While he at first begins asking with no clear purpose, his questions quickly begin to form a sharp attack on Sonya’s desperate situation. By pushing her to acknowledge that there is no reasonable way out of her predicament, Raskolnikov learns that she places absolute faith in God. After Raskolnikov challenges Sonya with the idea that “maybe there isn’t any God,” we find the first break, in which “[a]bout five minutes passed” (Dostoevsky 321).

In the second section of the chapter, Raskolnikov begins to speak like “a madman” (Dostoevsky 321). He kisses Sonya’s feet and proclaims that she is a hero for her suffering, especially because she has sinned in vain. Raskolnikov becomes obsessed with how Sonya manages to remain pure despite her prostitution, and understands from her speech that “what [has] sustained her” is “the thought of sin,” that is, her absolute trust in God, and “them, those ones”—her family, whom she loves (Dostoevsky 323). In an attempt to better understand Sonya, Raskolnikov demands that Sonya reads him the story of the raising of Lazarus from the Gospel of John. Though she begins reluctantly, Sonya builds up to a “real, true fever” (Dostoevsky 327). This section culminates in the sentence with which Nabokov takes issue, followed by another break, in which “[f]ive or more minutes passed” (Dostoevsky 328). This break, like the one before it, serves to highlight the coming shift in tone.

In the third section of the chapter, Raskolnikov adopts “some wild resolution” and behaves with bizarre incoherence (Dostoevsky 328). Explaining that he “came to talk about business,” Raskolnikov abruptly tells Sonya that he has left his family and is alone with her now; he insists that they must run away together. Raskolnikov explains that she, Sonya, was “able to step over,” to transcend morality, as he had wanted to do in murdering the pawnbroker (Dostoevsky 329). By killing herself, metaphorically, Sonya has succeeded in transcending common morality: but she cannot remain “alone,” Raskolnikov explains, or she will go mad, like he has (Dostoevsky 329). In a passionate outburst, Raskolnikov tells Sonya that “[f]reedom and power […] [o]ver all trembling creatures […] is the goal!”

(Dostoevsky 330).

Raskolnikov’s behavior in these three sections is totally dissimilar. The diversity of Raskolnikov’s voices comes with the assertion that Raskolnikov does not function as a single coherent personality, but rather acts as a mouthpiece for a series of discourses. Each

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voice forms its own respective discourse, defined by Bakhtin as “the thoughts, statements, or dialogue of individuals” and as “language in use, in social context” (“The Topic of the Speaking Person from Discourse in the Novel” 578). These discourses do not manifest as individual characters, but rather as ideas: The idea – as it was seen by Dostoevsky the artist – is not a subjective individual-psychological formation with “permanent resident rights” in a person’s head; no, the idea is inter-individual and inter-subjective – the realm of its existence is not individual consciousness but dialogic communion between consciousnesses. (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics) These ideas take shape between the characters and the narrator—indeed, they play among the characters themselves. In the redemption scene, Dostoevsky uses Raskolnikov to articulate three distinct perspectives on the question of suffering.

The first discourse is cold and analytic. Raskolnikov establishes this cynical discourse with an interrogation of Sonya’s beliefs: “’And what will become of you?’ he asked Sonya, ‘Will [Sonya’s family] stay here?’ ‘How is [Katerina Ivanovna, Sonya’s stepmother] so brave? She’s counting on you?’” (Dostoevsky 318). With pointed questioning, this discourse pushes Sonya to acknowledge her miserable situation. By challenging her future well-being and the well-being of those she cares about, Sonya must view her faith in the future rationally, because she can no longer justify it to herself. By pressing Sonya up against the wall of rationality, Sonya in turn exclaims that she believes “God won’t allow such horror!” (Dostoevsky 321). In the conclusive step presented by this discourse, Raskolnikov threatens: “maybe, there isn’t any God” (Dostoevsky 321). This skeptical dialogue takes nothing for granted and pushes Sonya to the very edge of the foundation of her beliefs.

The second discourse begins with Raskolnikov drawing powerful religious themes and moves from Raskolnikov’s words to the Scripture itself. Raskolnikov speaks “ecstatically,” evoking the original Greek ekstasis, “to be outside oneself ” (Dostoevsky 322). Using this discourse, Raskolnikov uses the biblical language of “sin,” “suffering,” and “horror,” and contrasts them with “opposite and holy feelings” and “purity” (Dostoevsky 322-323). The shift in tone marks a shift in articulated beliefs: Raskolnikov now “bow[s] to all human suffering,” but acknowledges that Sonya is a “great sinner” (Dostoevsky 322). The question of human suffering becomes of primary importance in this discourse: how, Raskolnikov asks, “had she been able to remain for so much too long a time in such a position [of suffering] and not lose her mind?” (Dostoevsky 323). The discourse continues with an internal monologue, which Raskolnikov concludes with a rhetorical question: “What does she expect, a miracle? No doubt. And isn’t this all a sign of madness?” (Dostoevsky 323). This religious discourse glorifies Sonya’s suffering and attempts to use it to define and justify her “strange and wondrous” beliefs (Dostoevsky 324).

The religious discourse proceeds to answer through scripture the initial question that it poses through Raskolnikov. The idea of a miracle, invoked by Raskolnikov, leaves him through a Bakhtinian “dialogic communion”—it actually “steps outside” of Raskolnikov.

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Once the idea of the miracle is brought up, Raskolnikov returns to the cynical discourse and begins “testing her further” (Dostoevsky 324). Once Sonya agrees to read from the Bible, the dialogue itself shifts physically from a conversation between Raskolnikov and Sonya to a conversation between Sonya and the Word of God, with Raskolnikov as a passive “motionless” observer (Dostoevsky 327).2 We find here for the only time in the entirety of the novel entire blocks of text quoted from an external source, the Book of John (Dostoevsky 326-327). In this section, Sonya channels “the word about the greatest, the unheard-of miracle”: here the religious discourse responds, through Sonya, to the question of miracle, and specifically, the question of theodicy (Dostoevsky 327).

The ideals of the superior human, embodied for Raskolnikov in the emperor Napolean, have dominated his mental space for the majority of the novel, yet play a noticeably small role in this chapter. This Napoleonic discourse of transcending morality and “stepping over” societal expectations returns as the third discourse of the scene, appearing only at the very end of the section, in response to the question of suffering: “But what, what can be done, then?” (Dostoevsky 329). In this discourse, Sonya is not a “great sinner” but instead “laid hands on [herself], she destroyed a life… [her] own. […] [She’s] nearly crazy already” (Dostoevsky 322, 329). This discourse values “[f]reedom and power, but above all, power!

Over all trembling creatures, over the whole antheap!” (Dostoevsky 330). The Napoleonic discourse attempts to persuade Sonya of these values: “[Power] is the goal! Remember it!

This is my parting word to you!” (Dostoevsky 330).

Each of the three discourses engages with Sonya as its subject. Raskolnikov is not the primary speaker in this section: he presents each discourse, but acts only as a mouthpiece in order to put Sonya in dialogue with each discourse. Thus, the multiple discourses that compose the section are not “cracks,” as Nabokov viewed them, but rather form a cohesive whole with a single topic: attempting to answer the question “what can be done?” (Dostoevsky 329). Each of the discourses engages Sonya, challenging her to articulate clearly how she can continue to live with and make sense of her suffering. The three points of view push her to highlight different facets of her faith, giving the reader a clear view of her understanding of her own life. Bakhtin describes the discourses we interact with as “striv[ing] to determine the very bases of our ideological interrelations with the world, the very basis of our behavior” (“The Topic of the Speaking Person from Discourse in the Novel” 580). By placing Sonya in dialogic struggle with each of these three discourses, Dostoevsky orchestrates a study of the question of suffering through Sonya.

By doing so, Dostoevsky places Sonya in the position of hero. Bakhtin describes the hero as playing a slightly different role in Dostoevsky’s works: “the hero interests Dostoevsky as a particular point of view on the world and on oneself […] What is important to Dostoevsky is not how his hero appears in the world but first and foremost how the world 2 The significance of the act of reading aloud remains to be explored. Raskolnikov understands Sonya’s resistance as a reluctance to “expose […] her secret” (Dostoevsky 326). Indeed, she refuses to read a book to her father (Dostoevsky 321). However, she reads to Lizaveta and eventually reads to Raskolnikov because of her “tormenting desire to read [...] and precisely for him, so that he would hear it, and precisely now” (Dostoevsky 325, 326).

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appears to his hero” (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics 47). Bakhtin’s slightly different take on the position of the hero in Dostoevsky’s work allows the reader to view Sonya’s position in relation to the three discourses of the chapter from a different angle. Keeping in mind that each of the three discourses focuses on the common question “what can be done?,” the true function of these discourses serve to develop for the reader Sonya’s “point of view on the world and on oneself,” particularly regarding the question of theodicy.

Sonya’s responses might be the subject of a deeper inquiry, as the discourses she articulates parallel Raskolnikov’s in complexity. However, Sonya’s “point of view on the world” is one in which God is the foundation of all existence: “what would I be without God?” she asks Raskolnikov (Dostoevsky 323). “He does everything!” Sonya later exclaims (Dostoevsky 324). In regards to evil and suffering in the present world, Sonya has a simple answer: “God won’t let it happen!” she announces to Raskolnikov; God “won’t allow such horror!”

(Dostoevsky 320, 321). In regards to “what can be done?” Sonya’s response is simply “God! . . .” (Dostoevsky 321). When God does not act, Sonya responds to suffering in the world with pity: “[I]t was such a pity to see!” she exclaims, “[a]nd don’t you pity her [Katerina Ivanovna]?” (Dostoevsky 319). Pity is the only appropriate response for Sonya, as she must trust that God will eventually make everything right. When challenged by all three discourses, Sonya remains steadfast in her faith that all suffering is through God. As a Dostoevskian hero, it is Sonya’s ideology and her perspective on the world that is the subject of inquiry. However, in typical Dostoevskian fashion, this subject of inquiry is not presented directly or didactically. Rather, it is developed in relation to a series of discourses presented through Raskolnikov. Each of the three discourses—analytic, religious, and Napoleonic—functions to engage Sonya in a different way; that is, each of the three discourses works to unwrap Sonya’s “point of view on the world.” And perhaps, beneath these many layers of discourse, the reader may find Dostoevsky’s true thoughts hidden between the disparaged words of the murderer and the harlot: the only response to horror and to suffering is to turn to God. •

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Translated by Caryl Emerson.

Minneapolis: University of Michigan Press, 1984.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. “The Topic of the Speaking Person from Discourse in the Novel.”

Richter, David H. The Critical Tradition. Translated by Caryl Emerson and M. Holquist. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 578-587.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. New York: Vintage Classics, 1992.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Russian Literature. New York: Mariner Books, 2002.

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The Petersburg Prostitute: Depictions of Illusive Women in Gogol and Dostoevsky Elizabeth R. Drooby The protagonists in Gogol’s “Nevsky Prospect” and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground each have a life-altering encounter with a prostitute figure. The protagonists’ perspectives on these two women, the unnamed Gogolian prostitute and the martyred Liza, both parallel and contradict each other. “Nevsky Prospect” and Notes from Underground depict women living in the male, illusory space of St. Petersburg. The tension between realism and illusion in Petersburg reflects a parallel tension between realism and illusion in the view of these two prostitutes and of women as a whole.

In the beginning of each text, the two protagonists do not view the women as temptresses, but rather as victims to be saved. The idea of the prostitute as a victim rather than as a deliberate seductress perpetuates a binary view of women. In Russian culture, this binary view of women is not a new concept. In early didactic Orthodox literature, women were depicted as either good or evil, and were expected to have specific traits in order to be seen as ideal, such as “God-fearing,” “silent,” “submissive,” and “chaste” (Pushkareva and Levin 37). These ideas, though rooted in early Russian texts, are prevalent throughout both “Nevsky Prospect” and Notes from Underground in the perspectives of Piskaryev, a young romantic painter, and the Underground Man, a nihilistic recluse. In these two texts, the protagonists expect the two women to uphold the same unrealistic ideals of womanhood.

Being a prostitute does not completely condemn the women in the eyes of Piskaryev and the Underground Man as long as each woman acts solemnly and expresses both penitence and the intent to end their profession.

The promise of reformation taps into the patriarchal tendency to infantilize and victimize women. The subordination of the two women is accomplished through idealization and is rooted in “the belief in [women’s] inferiority” (Clements 20). This victimization is exemplified in “Nevsky Prospect,” in which Piskaryev claims that the “trust” this “weak and beautiful” woman has shown imbues him with “chivalric rigor” and urges him to “[slavishly] fulfill all her commands” (Gogol 255). Piskaryev first describes the prostitute as “weak” and subsequently fantasizes about being her savior.

The women are viewed by the protagonists as both fallen (for not following through on their womanly duties of practicing chastity and solemnity) and as weak (for only being able to find salvation through the aid of their male rescuers). For instance, in “Nevsky Prospect,” Piskaryev believes that the nameless prostitute can be “restored” as the world’s “most beautiful ornament” so long as she marries him; in Notes from Underground, Liza is moved to redeem herself only after she listens to the Underground Man’s speech (Gogol 264). Piskaryev assumes that he has a complete understanding of the unnamed prostitute’s needs, regardless of whether or not she communicates them. When Piskaryev attends a ball in his dreams he sees the woman and imagines that, despite all the attention she at-

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tracts, he is the only one in the room who truly understands her because “she made a sign, but not with her hand, not by inclining her head […] her devastating eyes expressed this sign so subtly […] that no one could see it, yet he saw it, he understood it” (Gogol 260).

The unnamed woman assumes a passive role, while Piskaryev assumes full responsibility of her needs and believes that he has a full understanding of her desires. Similarly, in Notes from Underground, the Underground Man fantasizes about being Liza’s chivalric savior: “I save Liza […] I develop her mind, educate her […] she throws herself at my feet and declares that I’m her savior” (Dostoevsky 78). The women in both situations are not active in their own salvation and instead of literally saving either women, both men rather obsessively fantasize about doing so.

Piskaryev’s encounters with the “Perugino Bianca” are marked with images of shadows and uncertainty (Gogol 251). In his first encounter with her, Piskaryev imagines that she smiles at him but cannot determine if his surroundings are deceiving him or not: “It seemed to him that a slight smile flashed on her lips […] [he] did not believe his eyes.

No, it was the street lamp with its deceitful light showing the semblance of a smile on her face” (Gogol 254). Despite the fact that the prostitute’s actual intentions are vague at best, her apparent influence over Piskaryev is immense. “One glance” from her and Piskaryev’s entire surroundings are thrust into chaos—he is sent into “vague trembling[s]” and everything around him becomes “covered with a sort of mist” (Gogol 254). “Bianca” does not actively skew his perspective, but he views her as the cause of his disarray. In this instance, the woman wields a hallucinatory power because she is able to render Piskaryev utterly “bewitched” (Andrew 105). However, her power is false and wholly dependent on the male character. The prostitute becomes nothing more than another aspect of the Petersburg setting, in that she exists to discombobulate and “destroy” a man with “one glance” (Andrew 105).

St. Petersburg in both Gogol’s stories and in Notes from Underground is a space rife with hallucination and deception. The male characters immersed in these settings view the women, or more specifically the two prostitutes, in the same way. Both women are seen by the men only in shadows or in false light such as the street lamp in “Nevsky Prospect.”

The men are better able to supply their own views of reality in lieu of true reality; reality is obscured by the literal darkness in the setting of Petersburg, the “artificial city” (Andrew 102). The men are constantly fantasizing: the Underground Man fantasizes about becoming Liza’s mentor and eventual husband, whereas Piskaryev imagines a vivid dreamscape in which the prostitute is a modest noblewoman, a simple countrywoman, and a doting wife. Piskaryev’s vision of the prostitute is so determinedly unrealistic that he is literally unable to imagine her as he wants her to be without copious drugs usage. The fantasizing of the male characters further renders the prostitutes passive and non-dynamic.

Eventually, the two women are revealed as whole people rather than idealized fictions.

When Piskaryev first sees his Bianca in the daylight and hears her speak, he is disgusted. He blames her for his own misunderstanding of her character and angrily questions the purpose of her existence (Gogol 263). Similar to Piskaryev, the Underground Man lashes out at Liza for reasons she has no control over and exclaims that even though he

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is angry at himself, he will punish her as a result of it (Dostoevsky 84). In both texts, the two prostitutes are devoiced by the male protagonists. In Notes from Underground, Liza hardly talks—when she does finally speak, she does not directly answer the Underground Man’s questions and he immediately grows angry. For instance, when she comments on the bookishness of his speech, the Underground Man is gripped with “a malicious impulse” and seeks revenge (Dostoevsky 69). Similarly, in “Nevsky Prospect” there are only a few moments in which the prostitute speaks outside of Piskaryev’s dreamscape. For instance, when Piskaryev first hears her speak after following her home, he is disturbed by how “ridiculous” and “simple” her words are: “She opened her pretty lips and began to say something, but it was all so stupid, so trite” (Gogol, 256). When the women express their own thoughts, therefore breaking through the confines the male protagonists have set for them, they are met at best with dismissal—and at worst with malicious anger.

Additionally, both men are perturbed when the prostitutes do not look or act solemn.

For instance, the Underground Man is pleased when he finds Liza to be unsmiling: “[Liza had] a serious, seemingly astonished look. I liked that immediately; I would have hated her if she’d been smiling” (Dostoevsky 60). The Underground Man takes pleasure in her simple dress and solemn face, which reflects the image of an ideal woman: “In Old Russian literature […] the ‘good woman is bland and unrealistic, while the ‘evil woman’ is painted in vivid tones” (Pushkareva and Levin 36). Similarly, Piskaryev is thoroughly put-off by the prostitute’s laughter and smile. He sees both not as signs of her contentment, but rather as symbols of debauchery and indications that she is beyond saving. At one point he describes her smile as insolent and unnatural to her face: “[She] smiled significantly, looking straight into his eyes. Yet this smile was filled with some pathetic insolence, it was as strange and as suited to her face as an expression of piety is to the mug of a bride-taker, or an accountant’s ledger to a poet” (Gogol 256). Both women are viewed as forgivable by their male counterparts so long as the women are properly unhappy with their situations and penitent to a saint-like degree.

That men and women were different was accepted in 19th century Russian society as indisputable fact. In Dorothy Atkinson’s Women in Russia, she writes that women were characterized by “sensitivity, love, and modesty; men, by intellect, honor, and sense of duty” (Atkinson 34). The female characters in these texts are exalted for features perceived as womanly and degraded for features regarded as manly. For instance, Piskaryev is horrified to find that he is in a brothel, not strictly because sex and prostitution are morally wrong, but because it is “one of those havens” in which man “crushes and derides” woman by forcing her, by the act of prostitution, to “repulsively” take on male “mannerisms and insolence” (Gogol 256). Piskaryev recognizes the brothel as tragic because prostitution forces women to become more male, thereby losing their beauty and “weak [ness]” (Gogol 256).

The Underground man attests that women and men are significantly different, and attempts to explain a gendered concept of freedom to Liza: “Besides, a man’s no example to a woman. It’s a different thing altogether; even though I degrade and defile myself, I’m still no one’s slave […] You give away everything, all your freedom” (Dostoevsky 29). The

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Underground Man has no concept of what real freedom is, stating that Liza is not and will never truly be free because she will forever be indebted to the proprietor of the brothel. He suggests that she go back to her “father’s house” or get married: “Wake up, while there’s still time […] you could fall in love, get married, be happy” (Dostoevsky 64-65) He is unable to grasp that whether she is under the control of the brothel or under the control of her father or a husband, Liza can never be truly free.

In actuality, during the 19th century in Russia, the profession of prostitution sometimes allowed a certain amount of freedom for women who wanted to make their own money without relying on fathers or husbands: “prostitution remained the one (predominately female) trade that seemed to promise both good money and freedom” (Bernstein 4).

However, during the 1850s and 1860s, the state began to force limitations and restrictions on the profession by creating the “yellow ticket” which allowed prostitutes to legally work, but also “subjected them to police surveillance and medical supervision” (Clements 141).

Feminist movements and conversation about “the woman question” began in the late 1850s and 1860s in Russia, and were considered wholly un-Russian. Nihilism, a thought movement perpetuated by the Underground Man, and early feminist movements were both largely associated with Western thinking. In the same way that Western thought movements such as the Enlightenment were seen by Slavophiles as harmful to “real” Russia, the sexuality of “radical women” was seen as a direct deterrent to Russian ideals (Atkinson 41). A major thread throughout anti-Western journals was that the “sexual seduction” of genuine Russians by “un-Russian” people seemed to be a kind of political seduction (Atkinson 41). Similar to how St. Petersburg is seen as an artificial or an un-Russian city corrupted by Western ideas, the view of Petersburg women as sexual rather than sainted beings was seen equally as foreign and artificial.

Radical women, such as women nihilists and female students, were seen as sexually deviant. In Women in Russian, Atkinson writes that the nationalist Purishkevich had once described a “very proper congress of feminists” as “an assemblage of prostitutes” (Atkinson 44). The idea of sexual freedom is closely linked with sexual deviance; a prostitute is not seen as a woman making a choice to leave her father’s home by entering independently into a profession, but rather as a victim or as an immoral temptress. Women who attempt to gain freedom or escape the control of the father or husband figure will be “destroyed” and named a fallen woman or will be “transformed” and saved by marriage or a return to the father’s home (Hoisington 117).

The figure of the prostitute in Russian literature is unique; she complicates the notion of a binary view of women by embodying aspects of both the martyr and the tempter.

The two prostitute figures in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Gogol’s “Nevsky Prospect” are literary manifestations of 19th century Petersburg’s burgeoning struggle with Westernization and the “woman question” and its radical feminist consequences. The women’s depictions as temptresses or as martyrs are challenged through the viewpoints of the male protagonists, who complicate the binary view of women by having unreliable perspectives skewed by drugs, false light, and darkness.

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Andrew, Joe. Women in Russian Literature, 1780-1863. New York: St. Martin’s, 1988.

Atkinson, Dorothy, Alexander Dallin, and Gail Warshofsky. Women in Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1977.

Clements, Barbara Evans, Barbara Alpern. Engel, and Christine Worobec. Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation. Berkeley: U of California, 1991.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor, and Michael R. Katz. Notes from Underground. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2001.

Hoisington, Sona Stephan. A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist in Russian Literature. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1995.

Pevear, Richard, Larissa Volokhonsky, and Nikolai Gogol. The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. New York: Pantheon, 1998 Pushkareva, N. L., and Eve Levin. Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997.

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“Great Man” or History’s Slave: Portrayals of Napoleon in War and Peace Hannah Fagin Tolstoy claimed his monumental work War and Peace is “not a novel, even less is it an epic poem, and still less a historical chronicle” (Tolstoy 1309). In Some Words about War and Peace, written as a rebuttal to critical responses, Tolstoy makes it clear that historical inaccuracies in his work are not only intentional but contribute to a heightened sense of truth. Phillipe-Paul de Ségur’s account of the War of 1812, Defeat: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, offers a primary source description and analysis on the war from a French perspective. Although Tolstoy considered Ségur’s work to be a key primary source for War and Peace, he evidently read the book as a historically-skewed text written significantly after the War of 1812 rather than as a purely eyewitness account. Tolstoy perceived that Ségur and other documented chronicles contained a false impulse towards over-mythologizing historical events, especially embodied in his depiction of Napoleon. In War and Peace, Tolstoy amends the traditional characterization of Napoleon in favor of his own iconoclastic image in order to project his philosophy that history is driven by the coincidence of chance rather than the individual will of supposed “great men.”

In the beginning of War and Peace, Napoleon is portrayed through the gossip and talk of other characters in high society or military circles. The reader is first exposed to Napoleon through Prince Andrei Bolkonsky’s eyes, in the Battle of Austerlitz. Although Andrei is injured and unable to see clearly, the first distinctive thought he has upon seeing his hero is how Napoleon “seemed to him such a small insignificant creature” (Tolstoy 303).

This statement sets the stage for Tolstoy’s treatment of Napoleon over the course of the novel. For Tolstoy, Napoleon’s military genius builds him an undeserved legacy. Napoleon is as mortal and human as Andrei, and in Andrei’s defamiliarized state, it is apparent that Napoleon’s greatness stems from the myth of his legacy rather than his actual presence. It is also significant that Andrei is the first character to have a direct interaction with Napoleon because both characters are motivated by a desire to gain individual glory, which will lead to their eventual downfalls. Tolstoy further debunks Napoleon’s mythical status when Napoleon approaches Alexander I, emperor of Russia, at the writing of the Treaty of Tilsit, and he does “not sit well or firmly in the saddle,” perhaps showing his unease in the actual mechanics of warfare (Tolstoy 443). Napoleon’s military success cannot be attributed to his individual actions, as is further made apparent by his negligible role in ensuing battles.

Tolstoy does not fear portraying Napoleon in an unflattering way. The writer describes him as having thick thighs, a plump white neck, a boyish face, a short corpulent figure, and chest and stomach which protrude involuntarily (Tolstoy 664). Napoleon often wears his trademark “grey overcoat” and casts an intense gaze, suggesting that he is concerned with his own self-fashioning (Tolstoy 653, 935). Napoleon is also depicted as egotistical and caught up in his own legacy: “only what took place within his own mind interests him”

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(Tolstoy 64). Napoleon truly believes that he is in complete control of his own will and that the course of human history derives strictly from his desires. Tolstoy’s view is diametrically opposite, and he foresees the total inevitability of Napoleon’s defeat, claiming that it was the only possible outcome for such an unwieldy army and most inept military man (Tolstoy 732). Tolstoy is keen to reveal Napoleon’s flaws in order to humanize him so that the reader knows him not just for his myth as a “great man” but as a human being.

Ségur wrote his military account years after the War of 1812 was over—however, as an aide-de-camp of Napoleon, his inside access allowed him to give detailed descriptions of the events of the war and the sentiments of the Emperor. In Ségur’s attempt to provide a “truthful” descriptive account, he explains the particular reasons that the French lost the war and the underlying causes behind military mishaps. With an eye towards foreshadowing, he characterizes Napoleon in such a way that he does not place the burden of responsibility for the French defeat on Napoleon, but rather bolsters Napoleon’s image as a military genius with an integral position in the military itself. His initial characterization of Napoleon is vastly different from Tolstoy’s in that he emphasizes Napoleon’s encouraging attitude towards his troops. Napoleon “spoke to the soldiers in a jovial, bluff, often brusque manner […] He questioned them: did their captains take proper care of them?”

(Ségur 3). Thus, in Ségur’s account, Napoleon expresses genuine concern for the well-being of his troops and takes on a patriarchal role as a protector of his soldiers, not just his personal interests. Ségur also depicts Napoleon as being in a heightened position above his troops, mirroring the sense of total greatness that is traditionally associated with the emperor (Ségur 16).

Ségur has vastly different views on the cause of defeat than Tolstoy. He references bad omens such as when Napoleon falls off his horse while approaching the Niemen River which marks French entry into Russia, just one of the ways he employs fatalism to shield Napoleon from responsibility for his army’s pitfalls (Ségur 5). Another key scapegoat that Ségur ascribes to for the French defeat is that Napoleon had come down with a cold and could not perform as his usual self, writing that the “fate of Russia hung on just one more day of health, which failed Napoleon on the field of Borodino” (Ségur 22). Tolstoy is quick to rebut this argument, since it does not make sense if the outcome of battle is wholly dependent on Napoleon’s will—a misconception that Tolstoy strives to convincingly reject (Tolstoy 841).

Tolstoy also utilizes direct evidence from the Battle of Borodino to reject Ségur’s traditional portrayal of Napoleon. In both accounts, on the eve of battle, Napoleon receives a portrait of his son. In War and Peace, Napoleon’s facial features are instantly softened as he “assume[s] a look of pensive tenderness” (Tolstoy 836). Napoleon’s is first reminded, upon looking at the portrait, of his own historical significance, prompting him to express the “simplest paternal tenderness” (Tolstoy 836). Again, Tolstoy creates an image of a Napoleon who is hyperaware of his own greatness. As he admires the portrait, everyone knows to leave the room in order to give Napoleon a private opportunity to express his emotions.

He then decides to display the portrait outside for his guards to see. When he commands that the portrait be taken away, “De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed

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deeply to indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor’s words” (Tolstoy 837). Napoleon’s reputation has become more defined based on his public perception than the actual merits of his actions. The cult status surrounding Napoleon represents him as a personality to be worshiped for eternity. In Ségur’s depiction of the same scene when Napoleon sets the picture outside of his tent, it is “to show his private family to his military family, and display this symbol of hope in the presence of grave danger” (Ségur 61). While Napoleon’s reaction in War and Peace is more self-possessed, in Ségur his paternalism extends to all of his troops.

Although Tolstoy does concede some sense of paternalism to Napoleon’s character, he does so more to emphasize the unwavering devotion of his soldiers. The soldiers’ idolization of Napoleon and his efforts to collectivize a heterogeneous, multinational army seems unnatural. In War and Peace, Napoleon’s attempts to show concern over the well-being of his soldiers give the impression of disingenuity. This scene shows how Napoleon’s image as a “great man” is borne from within himself: he so believes in his own legacy that he deceives his troops and later historians into believing it as well. By self-creating a myth of his own infallibility, Napoleon places himself in the position of unnatural admiration, which, in Tolstoy’s opinion, is inherently corrupt and untruthful. It is also ironic that in Tolstoy’s view, Napoleon is not just a slave to the forces of history but also to the version of history he has constructed.

In the aftermath of Borodino, Tolstoy humanizes Napoleon to help him derail his status as a “great man.” Although Napoleon usually enjoys testing his wits after battle by surveying the battlefield, the aftermath of Borodino is too much for Napoleon to handle, and leaves him with considerable doubts about the motivation for war and regrets about the military strategy taken by his forces. Although in both Ségur and Tolstoy’s accounts Napoleon empathizes with the victims, in War and Peace he views his role as more central to the outcome of the war. Tolstoy writes, “And he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and again—as a horse walking a treadmill thinks he is doing something for itself—he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him” (Tolstoy 876). Napoleon believes in the myth that “war with Russia came about by his will […] he boldly took the responsibility for what happened” (Tolstoy 878). Tolstoy admits that Napoleon is merely a slave to the contingency and chance that drives the forces of history.

Both Ségur and Tolstoy agree that Napoleon’s contributions in the Battle of Borodino are dismal at best. In each of their texts, Napoleon withdraws from the action of battle because the smoke from the cannons makes it impossible for him to see. The reports he receives from officers are contradictory and what little orders he gives are never carried out. Tolstoy ridicules Napoleon for the way he thinks he bears the responsibility of battle though he is completely ineffectual. One key distinction from Ségur’s account that Tolstoy leaves out of War and Peace is the reaction of the officers and soldiers upon seeing Napoleon walk through the razed landscape of the battlefield: “Yet despite the rags, misery, and disaster, they still looked proud and let out shouts of triumph at the sight of the Emperor” (Ségur 80). While Napoleon is in the midst of a natural human moment of despair and

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suffering, he is jolted by the continual expectation to cultivate his legendary status. Tolstoy denies Napoleon this moment and instead leaves him to brood over his own sense of humanity.

One of Tolstoy’s greatest motivations in discrediting Napoleon’s myth is the desire to project his philosophies about history and warfare. Tolstoy desires to disprove the validity of semiotic totalitarianism (coined by historian Gary Saul Morson and defined as the philosophy that “behind the multiplicity of apparently accidental or random facts of historical life, there is really a set of rules, a system, or a pattern that can explain everything” (Morson 84)). Tolstoy’s first logical step in order to show that there are no underlying patterns to history is by invalidating the myth of “great men.” Any theory proclaiming contingency, randomness, and change as the primary drivers of history could be contradicted if an individual’s will was able to directly produce a historical outcome—relating to the idea of intense military planning. Napoleon’s military planning mindset is a key aspect of his genius in Ségur’s account, but is ridiculed by Tolstoy as a sign of naiveté in War and Peace.

Tolstoy characterizes Kutuzov as a more successful commander-in-chief, not because he is a “genius” by any means, but because he allows fate and chance to play themselves out.

Tolstoy’s departure from the plot of the novel into various historiographical and philosophical interludes makes his principal ideas that chance drives history explicit.

Not only is Tolstoy’s characterization of Napoleon unexpected in its rebellion of stereotypical depictions, but he actually claims that Napoleon and all great leaders in general are slaves to the processes of history, and often refers to this inevitability in history as predestination (Tolstoy 649). Though his rhetoric of chance, fate, and predestination seem to invoke religious imagery, he translates the religious lexicon into his own philosophy.

Another reason Tolstoy invalidates Napoleon’s myth is to create the sense that the War of 1812 was nationalistic, a people’s war for Russia. While Napoleon romanticizes victory, Alexander is fighting an entirely different war that is defensive in nature and more a patriotic battle of wills than military conquest. Napoleon attempts to retain a strong army, but his invasion of Moscow only leaves him sitting in the city for a month with no exit in sight.

Tolstoy taunts Napoleon for thinking he will rise greater than that of the people of Russia, when, in fact, all of the consequences and outcomes of war occurred “because it had to”— they are the products of fate rather that of his own volition (Tolstoy 649).

For Tolstoy, the idea of “great men” is incompatible with his philosophy regarding what drives the course of history. Napoleon Bonaparte’s legacy as one of the most mythologized men in the Western canon had already been well established by Tolstoy’s time and has continued to elevate itself even today. But Tolstoy rebels against this traditional depiction of Napoleon to further his own historic objective: that history is caused by coincidence and chance, and no mortal, no matter how great, has the means to challenge our predestined fate.

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Morson, Gary Saul. Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in ‘War and Peace.’ Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1987. de Ségur, Philippe-Paul. Defeat: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign. Trans. J. David Townsend. New York: New York Review Books, 2008.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude. Rev. Amy Mandelker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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Being Human: Definitions from the Fate and Journey of the Master and Margarita Cathy Shen A reading of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita quickly reveals the existence of a sui generis cosmology or moral hierarchy in the novel that references but does not coincide with Orthodox Christian tradition. Bulgakov’s in-world hierarchy of beings is constructed from an abundance of skewed Biblical imagery which is both evocative and unnerving. As a result, the spiritually-inquisitive reader discovers the explicit presence of a God, a Devil, and a varied assortment of human beings, though the nature of their existence in relation to one another is, at first, frighteningly indeterminate. With the cast of characters’ roles in Bulgakov’s cosmic play unclear, how is one to understand the workings of this universe?

And more importantly, what does it mean to be human in The Master and Margarita? The titular characters of Bulgakov’s novel are central to both the work’s thematic core and its cosmic scheme. The novel-world suggests that though Margarita and the Master function as prototypes for mankind at large, they are inextricably linked with the divine and its dark counterpart.

First, the evident ambiguity with which Bulgakov paints “divinity” in his novel suggests that relations between the divine and human must begin with the human. Yeshua Ha-Nozri, apparently an avatar of Christ, is intentionally depicted as suffering from contradictory bouts of human weakness and severe, godly judgment. His appearances in the novel are limited to the few chapters which take place in Yershalaim—a Jerusalem of ambiguous historicity—and a brief, symbolic presence through Matthew Levi the prophet (Bulgakov 360-361). Woland, the Devil, is much more visible throughout the novel, but his “divine” nature is also obscured. He carries out the superficial actions of an inimical deity counteracting God, but the Faustian epigraph of The Master and Margarita—“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good”—throws his moral position into question. Perhaps the most incisive way to understand these cosmic relationships is to approach them from the human vantage point.

Furthermore, Bulgakov casts the Master and Margarita as representatives of ideal human behavior. Bulgakov introduces a dizzying array of minor human characters in a myriad of subplots; these characters are individually depicted, each with his or her own desires, weaknesses, and level of moral integrity—but none are so vividly or nobly portrayed as the Master and his Margarita. He, “a master” both self-proclaimed and recognized by Margarita (Bulgakov 138, 286), possesses a creative integrity that is indissolubly tied to his singular ability to access the true existence of Yershalaim in his writings. She, the woman handpicked by Woland to lead his supernatural ball, is the “Queen Margot,” who has such an incredible, inherent capacity for forgiveness that all of Hell’s damned souls seek her alone for a chance at redemption (Bulgakov 262-272). Given the exceptional attributes of the

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Master and Margarita, which no other human characters possess to a comparable degree, it is reasonable to model the novel’s conception of the ideal human experience after theirs.

Hence two critical questions arise. In looking at the journey of the Master and Margarita through both the Soviet lens of secularity and the supernatural currents of Moscow, it is inevitable that one should wonder at their unusual closeness to the demonic Woland; the other human characters have brief encounters with the Devil (often by proxy through members of his retinue), but only the Master and Margarita enter into a direct, extended audience with Satan himself. Closely related to this uncanny intimacy is the eventual fate of the Master and his beloved. In discerning Bulgakov’s vision of human and divine relationships, specifically the cosmic place of human beings, by analyzing Margarita and the Master, then the questions of their life-after-death and closeness to “evil” must be addressed.

Bulgakov devotes to them an entire chapter unmistakably titled “The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided.” The ending of this segment finds Woland face to face with prophet Matthew Levi acting as a kind of spiritual messenger for Yeshua, who has come to enact the fate of the Master and Margarita’s souls. Levi reveals that Yeshua has read the Master’s account of divine history favorably, and asks Woland to deliver the Master to peace as a “reward” for the his spiritual insight and adherence to the truth of the city of Yershalaim (Bulgakov 360). However, though this ill-defined “peace” is referred to as a divine “reward,” it is apparent in Woland’s bitter reaction that it is an end somehow inferior to the “light” in which Yeshua and presumably Levi reside (Bulgakov 361). Yet even though the Master and Margarita, presented as exemplary human beings, do not receive the ultimate divine reward, it is possible to assert that the fate they were dealt revealed itself as the most “humanly desirable” end.

The key to the most humanly desirable fate is the culmination of recurrent “home and hearth” imagery in the Master and Margarita’s spiritual destination. When “the Master walked with [Margarita] in the morning over a mossy little stone bridge,” they literally arrive at their “eternal home” (Bulgakov 384). Here, the Master and his beloved “[stroll] under cherry trees just coming into bloom [… ] listen to Schubert […] [write] with a goose quill by candlelight […] [are] visited by those [they] love […] fall asleep with a smile on [their] lips” (Bulgakov 383-384). The house is the achingly beautiful realization of the need for refuge expressed throughout the novel. Its most prominent echo is of that little basement apartment in Moscow “[where] the lamp [was] burning” and where the Master and Margarita found sanctuary in their earthly lives (Bulgakov 288). Before the arrest of the Master, this place was a symbol of peace for its persecuted inhabitants.

Earlier in the text, a scene with authors of Soviet propaganda, who are vying for paid writing retreats to distant holiday locations, evokes a similar theme of seeking peace from a tainted world (Bulgakov 56). Even Griboedov’s—the Soviet equivalent of a much coveted, members-only supper club—is a variation on the image of brightly-lit home-and-hearth in the midst of bleak Moscow. In the Yershalaim chapters, Pontius Pilate’s unspoken desire to secret Yeshua away to his estate in Caesarea brings to mind the need for security and rest embodied in a home (Bulgakov 28). Such multifaceted and insistent emphasis on

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humanity’s desire for refuge points directly to the symbolic significance of the Master and Margarita’s “reward.”

A historical approach would likely attribute the evocation of corrupted “home and hearth” imagery to Bulgakov’s sentiments against constant Soviet surveillance and threat— that is, a real historical and cultural need for peace and refuge. However, in the present case, the appearance of multiple “lesser” versions of the “eternal home” granted to Margarita and the Master attests simply to the human desirability of their fate. Before departing forever, Woland promises Margarita that the fate “[he] is offering [her and the Master], and what Yeshua has asked for [them], is better still” than the best ending she could have imagined (Bulgakov 380). In short, the fate dealt the Master and Margarita is that dreamed of not by just Margarita herself, but by other human beings throughout the novel; the desire for “home and hearth” links Pilate’s Yershalaim to Soviet Moscow, universally wished for by people across time—and this most humanly desirable “eternal home” is the fate of Bulgakov’s hero and his beloved.

Two other prominent “spiritual ever-afters” depicted by Bulgakov also support this claim. “Set free” on the same night as the Master and Margarita, Pontius Pilate is given a similar but incomparable reward, in which he walks on his “path of moonlight” towards a lush garden, accompanied by his faithful dog, Banga (Bulgakov 382). Woland instructs the Master to “leave [Pilate and Banga] to each other,” musing that perhaps “they’ll arrive at something” (Bulgakov 383). Later, through the younger writer Ivan “Homeless” Nikolaevich’s repeated dreams on nights of the full moon, Pontius Pilate’s other companion is a miraculously revived Yeshua, whose face is “disfigured” as from the execution, who debates happily with Pilate and swears that “of course [the execution] never happened” (Bulgakov 395). Though initially Pilate too seems to have received his eternal reward in the form of unrealized earthly desire, subtle hints suggest that his “peace” is in some way a lesser one than that of Margarita and the Master. The Master and his beloved arrive immediately at their “eternal home” where the “promised dawn […] came straight away, immediately after the midnight moon” (Bulgakov 383). By contrast, it is implied that Pilate eternally journeys towards the garden; though Woland suggests that he may eventually reach it, it is unsure whether the procurator truly will. In addition, the peace Pilate finds as a result of Yeshua’s denial of his execution could be false—Yeshua’s eyes “smile for some reason” as he lies to comfort the procurator, and consequently Pilate retains a degree of self-delusion in his state of “eternal peace” (Bulgakov 395). In that sense, he too is granted a humanly sought-after peace, but of a kind more dubious than that given to the Master and his beloved.

Comparatively, the example of Matthew Levi illustrates a fate objectively (in the moral criterion of the novel-world) better than that of Margarita and the Master. As his “faithful and only disciple,” Levi is granted a unique place alongside Yeshua (Bulgakov 176). Presumably, the “light” inhabited by Yeshua and Levi is the supreme spiritual “reward,” and is thus better than the Master and Margarita’s “peace” (Bulgakov 361). Bulgakov constructs this hierarchy explicitly by having Levi appear as an immortal apostle of Yeshua because of his exceptional faith in life. Yet even more complex are the subtle ways that Bulgak-

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ov challenges this designation by repeatedly throwing a negative light on both Levi and his divinely-sanctioned fate. Before his death, Levi is characterized as a fanatical, “cruel” tax-collector who blatantly misinterprets all of Yeshua’s teachings (Bulgakov 329, 23).

Even after his transformation into the divine messenger of Christ, Levi continues to be described along the lines of “tattered, clay-covered, [and] sullen” (Bulgakov 360). His dogged adherence to a dualistic opposition between Christ and the Devil is a laughable misinterpretation of the complexity of this cosmic scheme, which earns him subtle mockery even from Yeshua, whom he serves. Furthermore, Woland calls Levi’s everlasting existence that of a “slave,” an accusation Levi can only weakly deny (Bulgakov 360). This unsympathetic portrayal of one who supposedly gained the ultimate spiritual reward (cemented by the apparent severity with which Levi and Yeshua refuse “light” to the Master and Margarita, as demanded by Woland) further corroborates the status of the Master and Margarita’s fate as that most humanly desirable—that is, Bulgakov suggests that for his two most fully-realized characters, the best possible spiritual reward is emphatically not the most divine.

Having established that the Master and Margarita’s fate is the most humanly desirable, naturally their representative position as “most human” is linked to this notion. By right of their combined virtues of creative integrity, faith, and mercy, the Master and Margarita are the most fully-realized of Bulgakov’s human characters. They possess greater innate virtues than other Muscovites who are described as consumed by greed, and are more faithful to the expression of these virtues than characters like Ivan “Homeless,” who panders his talent to the Soviet government. Yet these two characters also remain mortal, unlike Matthew Levi in his fanatical belief. This is why the circular reinforcement of the Master and Margarita’s humanly desirable fate and their exemplary human role suggests a proportional system of virtue and reward for human beings in the world of the novel; those who fail their own humanity by rejecting integrity, faith, and mercy (lesser Muscovites) receive a less humanly desirable end, and those who fully embody their humanity in its virtues and are aware of their flaws (Master and Margarita) are granted the most attractive fate. As for those who transcend their own humanity in some capacity, as is the case with Matthew Levi and his faith, they are elevated into the realm of the divine, which is fundamentally inhuman and divorced from the scope of human desire.

Thus exemplifies the moral-spiritual system through which humans exist in Bulgakov’s novel-world. Yet beyond the role of humans, what can be said of the larger cosmic scheme of The Master and Margarita? Given the role of Margarita and the Master and the salience of their fate, what other implications may be derived from their proximity to demonic Woland? The definition of human roles through the glorified example of Margarita and the Master is crucial to understanding how divine roles function in Bulgakov’s text.

Because the Master and his beloved are ideal human beings, their actions are representative of human nature as a whole—thus their rescue and reunion at the hands of Woland, their brief travels with him as part of his retinue, and ultimately, their eternal reward facilitated by Woland speaks to the implied relations between humanity and “Satan.” In this light, Woland’s interactions with the Master and Margarita cannot be a singular phenomenon. Rather, this relationship indicates the necessity of “darkness” in human life, or even the Devil’s true function as a facilitator of human desire.

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The importance of establishing the Master and Margarita as prototypes for humanity is twofold: in conjunction with their humanly desirable fate, this model defines the proportional moral-spiritual system of rewards and consequences in which humans reside and sheds light on the relative role of “evil” or “Satan” in the same cosmic scheme. At the end of Bulgakov’s masterpiece, the exact nature of a divine God remains uncertain, perhaps even radically devalued. In creating the Master and Margarita as human figures set apart, the role of human desire in this sui generis world proves its estrangement from the divine, and humanity’s inherent proximity to “darkness” is further explored.

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Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita. Trans. Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear. N.p.: Penguin Classics, 2001. Print.

CREATIVE WRITING With contributions from: Nina Balac • Columbia College, Class of 2015 Anastasiya Moroz • Barnard College, Class of 2017 Noah Glover-Ettrich • University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Class of 2014

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A Few Things Nina Balac

The history of my genes weighs heavily on me, an overstuffed backpack making it hard to step forward and look up sometimes. I cover your eyes and give you a bite, each particle gently brushing against your probing taste buds like lovers’ hands on a first date. So, what am I? It’s the tormenting itch left by a thirsty mosquito, the name of the person you just ran into running around in your head, impossible to catch. The answer emerges and lands heavy like bombs. Planes flying over Beograd.

Rakia runs cold and thick in my blood, a potent, prickly liquid trickling its way through my body to remind me it’s there. But it’s so damn hard to mix.

Tell me, how do you marry oil and water? How do you make it so that the smell of my grandmother’s fresh cut parsley can swim across the ocean and push through the crowded subway to rest against the pillow of my nostril? I kiss the hand that feeds me because it’s a beautiful mess of blisters and lines that trace the path of a Bosnian orphan who cupped the world. I want to grasp onto it like a toddler on the first day of school. Fingers intertwined like a vine, we climb higher together. I have a shadow of fear that follows me, a ringing in my ear that becomes louder when it can’t hide behind the background noise of life. Patches of salty doubt nick my skin after a dip in the volatile ocean. I’ve become a coaster for the feelings of others to rest on. Yes, don’t worry, I got your message and sent that email and won’t forget to buy some dark bread on the way home.

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Formerly, Presently, and What Could Be Anastasiya Moroz

The second hand races and the minutes cannot catch up. The clock strikes one, strikes two, strikes three. The wall glistens, covered in a fresco of white paper topiary that leads down to the floor. The patterns of golden wood, whose squares are outlined against each other, appear from under the carpet that peeks out from underneath the lacquered table, white lace runner dangling off the sides. The table is empty, almost empty. The cup stands while the man and woman dance, gliding over thin ice in their skates, fur coats, and hats, vyshyvanki underneath. Why are they smiling? Why should they smile? Just look outside, look across the hall, maybe even across the country. Happiness is now half understood; we are not whole. Ukraine needs to be whole, to feel whole again.

We are now fragile, like crystal champagne glasses on a shelf. They stand waiting for their hour, to shine again, to be used again, to be presentable again. What are we being reduced to? Are we a vessel or something simply useful—a mediatory step between the bottle and the mouth? Are they pouring poison or sparkling wine? Are we really the step between the source and the line of victims further west, in lands more European than ours? Why are the glasses not seen for who they are, for what they were, and for what they have the ability to be?

And so I sit, waiting, half trembling and half hopeful—only half hopeful because I am being pulled from both sides.

All I can remember is what was wonderful. All I remember is the essence, the beauty of a country so rich. There are fountains, gardens with piercing orange and red geraniums, the sunflowers, cobblestone streets, the hills, alleyways that lead to gold-topped cathedrals and churches. Incense escapes from behind heavy wooden doors and makes me weak in the knees. I can smell the musky leaves of the trees shaking off their cover. The snowtopped opera house stands dignified among the ancient buildings and the hollow sound of the woodpecker resounds throughout the park. I remember how I looked up at the horizon over the Dnieper and over my city.

There is something so simple about everything. You live, and the people, the streets, and the air give back to you. You feel connected through the ground and to everything it gives. The fields of gold shake as you roll by at twenty miles per hour. The dusty roads lead to the brick and wooden houses, earthy in their smell, with their painted fences and apple trees. The skies may be clear, but the air is smoky—it is always smoky here now. The smoke, travelling from the south… and the east.

The wire-like trees that cover much of Ukraine now obstruct the view from the living room window. The man and woman on the cup are now separated by a crack. I wonder how much longer it will hold up. The Khrushchevki are also crumbling, with their balconies of whitewashed boards and rusting iron window frames. They stand as an image of tension, of the decay of a joined union, one that was once responsible for them.; The children’s playground is crumbling amid earth upheaved in battle. No, not battle, but hopelessness

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and distress. The bright green, yellow, pink, blue paint that covers the swings, slides, and steps is still there, but now it is ash green, ash yellow, ash pink‌ It is like this everywhere.

The people. The people crawl along the concrete pavement that is stronger than they are.

But both are breaking from the strain of war, from sadness, from futility, from time.

Is time on our side? Will it help or hinder? If only time could stop. It would be easier to see the strength, the beauty, and the power of a nation once together if only time froze.

Now the air is smokier, travelling in from the southeast‌ But the smoke must come, and it will fade away to show the light.

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When Ivanovna’s Building Was Purged of Counter-Revolutionaries Leningrad, 1934 • After Anna Akhmatova Noah Glover-Ettrich She knew they would come for her at dawn, the chosen hour when the sun’s optimistic appearance is just ironic enough to set the stage for despair.

Even so, the banging on the door jolted her to her feet, her rosary falling from her elegant, arthritic fingers.

None of the neighbors could meet her eye, not that she expected them to.

Even if only one had betrayed her, they all coveted her apartment, purchased for her long ago, rumor had it, by a nobleman charmed by her resemblance to Pavlova.

They watched silently as she disappeared into the back of the Cheka van, then scurried to stake their claims.

They entered almost reverently, gawking at Parisian furniture, threadbare but defiantly frivolous.

A molting sable coat, hinting of midnight troika rides along the Neva.

The chiming of a Swiss clock, an echo from a world that perished in a hail of bullets at Yekaterinburg.

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Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread Noah Glover-Ettrich

He spoke of the gulag only once— my stoic grandfather with the gravelly voice, staring into the distance with eyes as bleak as a Siberian winter sky.

Telling of the frail man huddled in the snow outside the barracks, back pressed against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, legs encased by skeletal arms.

How he, desperate for a share of the pitiful morning ration of bitter bread, heedlessly kicked the man’s blackened foot— how it snapped off, frozen solid.

How the man died before evening roll call.

“But you survived,” I said.

“Not really,” I heard him say, in a hollow voice that sounded as if it had to cross a thousand miles of black ice to reach me.

TRANS LATION With contributions from: Olga Korobova • Northwestern University, Class of 2015 Veniamin Gushchin • Columbia College, Class of 2018

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Translation

Winter (Зима)

Sergey Ostrovskiy Translated by Olga Korobova At the edge of the forest Lived Winter in a cottage She pickled all the snowballs In barrels made of birches.

She’d spend time spinning yarn and The canvasses she wove.

She forged the icy bridges As the frozen rivers flowed.

У леса на опушке Жила Зима в избушке. Она снежки солила В березовой кадушке. Она сучила пряжу, Она ткала холсты, Ковала ледяные Над реками мосты.

Ceilings icy and cold, Doors creak noisily Dark, past the bristly wall, Prickles spookily.

You step out on the porch— Frost surrounds you, And from the windows, smoke’s Bluish blue!

Потолок ледяной, Дверь скрипучая, За шершавой стеной Тьма колючая, Как шагнешь за порог – Всюду иней, А из окон парок Синий-синий!

She set out for the hunt And she grinded silver hail.

She placed the slender moon In a chilly crystal pail.

She sewed fur coats for trees And laid out paths for sleds.

And then she hurried back To her cottage for some rest.

Ходила на охоту, Гранила серебро, Сажала тонкий месяц В хрустальное ведро, Деревьям шубы шила, Торила санный путь, А после в лес спешила В избушке отдохнуть.

Ceilings icy and cold, Doors creak noisily, Dark, past the bristly wall, Prickles spookily.

You step out on the porch— Frost surrounds you, And from the windows, smoke’s Bluish blue!

Потолок ледяной, Дверь скрипучая, За шершавой стеной Тьма колючая, Как шагнешь за порог – Всюду иней, А из окон парок Синий-синий!

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She Came from the Frost (Она пришла с мороза) Alexander Blok Translated by Veniamin Gushchin

She came from the frost, Blushing, And filled the room With the aroma of freshness and perfume, With her ringing voice, And, without the slightest respect for my work, With her chatter.

She immediately dropped onto the floor The fattest edition of an art magazine, And I suddenly felt That my previously large chamber Had barely any room.

All of this was a little vexing And quite absurd.

However, she fancied That I read her Macbeth.

Barely reaching the bubbles of the earth, Of which I cannot speak without trepidation, I noticed that she was also worried And was attentively staring out the window.

As it turned out, a fat dappled cat Had, with some difficulty, glued himself to the roof side, Stalking a pair of kissing pigeons.

I was quite annoyed, most of all Because the pigeons were kissing and not us, And gone were the times of Paolo and Francesca

Translation

Она пришла с мороза, Раскрасневшаяся, Наполнила комнату Ароматом воздуха и духов, Звонким голосом И совсем неуважительной к занятиям Болтовней. Она немедленно уронила на пол Толстый том художественного журнала, И сейчас же стало казаться, Что в моей большой комнате Очень мало места. Все это было немножко досадно И довольно нелепо. Впрочем, она захотела, Чтобы я читал ей вслух «Макбета». Едва дойдя до пузырей земли, О которых я не могу говорить без волнения, Я заметил, что она тоже волнуется И внимательно смотрит в окно. Оказалось, что большой пестрый кот С трудом лепится по краю крыши, Подстерегая целующихся голубей. Я рассердился больше всего на то, Что целовались не мы, а голуби, И что прошли времена Паоло и Франчески.

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