Understanding 20th Century Russian
History Through Literature: A Workshop
for High School Teachers
By Gina M. Peirce
Assistant Director, Center for Russian and East European Studies
University of Pittsburgh
Workshop given on October 9, 2006 at
Gateway Senior High School, Monroeville, PA,
in cooperation with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit
Introductions
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Name, School, Subject and Grade Level Taught
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Why are you interested in 20th century Russian history and
literature? How much background do you have in these subjects?
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What do you hope to learn from this workshop?
Historical Timeline
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February and October Revolutions, 1917
Civil War and war communism, 1918-21
New Economic Policy proclaimed under Vladimir Lenin in 1921,
officially ended under Josef Stalin in 1929
Soviet Union established, 1922
Great Terror under Stalin, 1934-38
Pact signed with Nazi Germany in 1939; USSR invades and
annexes territories on its western border
Germany attacks USSR and “Great Patriotic War” begins, 1941
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
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Grew up in Moscow, studied philosophy, then began writing
poetry in 1914
Initially supported Bolshevik Revolution, published several
poetry collections and autobiographical stories in 1920s and 30s
Disillusioned with Communist ideals after Stalinist terror and
purges, feared publishing own work and began publishing
translations instead (most famously Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
Wrote his masterpiece novel, Doctor Zhivago, in 1946-55
Soviet authorities would not allow novel’s publication – first
published in Italy in 1957
Boris Pasternak, continued
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Doctor Zhivago then translated into many languages, but never
published in USSR until 1987 under Mikhail Gorbachev
Pasternak awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, but was
threatened with deportation and refused the prize under pressure
from Soviet authorities
Died shortly after, in 1960
1965 film version of Doctor Zhivago (much simplified from the
novel) became blockbuster around the world, but also not shown
in USSR until shortly before breakup of Soviet Union
Themes of Doctor Zhivago
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Story of life of fictional doctor and poet, Yuri Zhivago
He and wife Tonia are from affluent families, must struggle for
survival (along with most Russians) after 1917 Revolution
Accounts of First World War and Russian Civil War through
Zhivago’s eyes (serves as doctor in each, though unwillingly in
latter case after captured by partisans)
Conditions of life in Moscow contrasted with provinces (town
of Yuriatin and its environs in Ural Mountain region of Russia)
Love affair with Lara Antipova, woman from modest
background whose husband leaves her to become a partisan
commander in the Civil War
Themes of Doctor Zhivago, continued
Much of novel consists of Zhivago’s musings on love, art, history,
etc., but also contains many realistic details of Russian life during
this turbulent period
In Doctor Zhivago, “Everyone is reduced to a primitive, prehistoric
level of bare subsistence […] even as they participate in one of
the defining historical moments of the twentieth century […]
The raw facts of history in Doctor Zhivago are about death and
ruin and, indeed, physical and metaphysical homelessness.”
(Edith W. Clowes, Doctor Zhivago: A Critical Companion,
Northwestern University Press, pgs. 38-39)
Excerpts from Doctor Zhivago
Chapter 6: Zhivago’s return to his home and family in Moscow in
summer 1917 (between the two Russian revolutions), after
serving as a doctor for Russian troops in First World War
Descriptions of chaotic conditions in Moscow and references to
housing crisis/redistribution of space, economic hardships
experienced by population as basic goods became scarce (pgs.
166-171)
Dinner party for Zhivago’s homecoming, featuring a duck given to
him by an eccentric he met on the train returning from the war
front:
Excerpts from Doctor Zhivago, continued
“The large duck was an unheard-of luxury in those already hungry
days, but there was no bread with it, and because of this its
splendor was somehow pointless – it even got on one’s nerves.
The alcohol (a favorite black-market currency) had been brought
[…] in a medicine bottle with a glass stopper […] But the
saddest thing of all was that their party was a kind of betrayal.
You could not imagine anyone in the houses across the street
eating or drinking in the same way at the same time. Beyond the
windows lay silent, dark, hungry Moscow. Its shops were empty,
and as for game and vodka, people had even forgotten to think
about such things.” (p. 175)
Excerpts from Doctor Zhivago, continued
Account of Bolshevik Revolution, pgs. 190-195
Unusually cold winters characterized by famine, 1917-19, as private
enterprise was driven underground and no effective statecontrolled distribution system yet established (pgs. 195-199)
Civil War and war communism period, barter and black market
trade widespread as people tried to survive
Zhivago’s family decides to move temporarily from Moscow to his
wife’s family’s former estate in the Urals to survive by growing
their own food – description of Yaroslavsky train station (p. 210)
shows further evidence of social disorder and breakdown of
country’s transportation system
Excerpts from Doctor Zhivago, continued
At end of novel, Zhivago returns to Moscow during NEP period
(1922), having been separated from his family and Lara due to
civil war and threats of political persecution
Description of effects of removing ban on private enterprise (p.
473) and social classes in theoretically classless society
Zhivago and his unofficial “third wife” Marina “chopped wood for
a good many of the tenants on the different floors. Some of
them, particularly speculators who had made fortunes at the
beginning of the NEP and artists and scholars who were
close to the government, were setting up house on a
comfortable scale.” (p. 479)
Excerpts from Doctor Zhivago, continued
One more example of housing crisis:
“Gordon’s room was part of a curious structure, which had once
been the premises of a fashionable tailor […] The premises were
now divided into three. By means of floor boards an extra room
had been fitted into the space between the lower and the upper
levels. It had what was, for a living room, a curious window,
about three feet high, starting at floor level and with part of the
gold letters remaining.” (p. 480)
Many more examples of this type in Zoshchenko’s stories
Mikhail M. Zoshchenko (1894-1958)
Grew
up in St. Petersburg, studied law
Served in First World War
Served in Red Army during Russian Civil War
Attempted various jobs including postmaster and cobbler
(repairing shoes), 1919-22
Published first stories in 1922; published in Soviet satirical
press starting in 1923 until most satirical publications were
shut down around 1930
Fell out of favor with Soviet authorities and was subjected to
Communist Party harassment from 1946 until his death
Background Information: NEP
“New Economic Policy” introduced by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 to
recover from economic devastation of Civil War period
Permitted some private agriculture, private traders and craftspeople
Businesspeople known as “NEPmen” gained reputation for greed
and lack of cultural sophistication (somewhat like new moneyed
class or “New Russians” in 1990s)
NEP accompanied by tolerance of literature by “fellow travelers,”
or writers whose works were not openly anti-Soviet but not
necessarily favorable toward Soviet system
NEP ended in late 1920s after Stalin consolidated power; private
enterprise then eliminated
Soviet Cultural Policy During NEP
Central Directorate for Matters of Literature and Publishing
(“Glavlit”) created 1922, had to approve publication of any
printed material
Relatively permissive at first, but laid foundation for later, much
stricter censorship under Stalin
Debate among literary critics throughout 1920s on whether “since
the Soviet state had set up the proper legal procedures for
uncovering and eradicating social ills, satirical literature was no
longer necessary” (Jeremy Hicks, trans., The Galosh and Other
Stories by Mikhail Zoshchenko, Angel, pg. 9)
Satire remained enormously popular with the public
Zoshchenko and Soviet Satire
In 1922-28, seven satirical magazines in Moscow and Petrograd/
Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg) had combined print run of
over half a million copies
Approximately equal to daily circulation of official Communist
Party newspaper, Pravda
Zoshchenko estimated to have sold 100 million copies of his
stories
Huge popularity attributed to his simple writing style, use of
colloquial language/slang, timely subject matter to which many
people could relate
Zoshchenko’s Audience
Stories appealed to many Soviet citizens who had just completed
basic literacy courses through Bolsheviks’ literacy campaign -illiteracy was widespread in society composed mainly of peasants
before Revolution
Many people migrated from countryside to major cities after
Revolution in search of work, then faced problems similar to
those of Zoshchenko’s characters
Themes of Zoshchenko’s Stories
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Confusion of ordinary Russians over new Marxist political
vocabulary – characters often try to use this vocabulary and
make humorous mistakes
Overcrowding and housing shortage in cities due to rapid
influx of people
Shortages and poor quality of consumer goods as emphasis
was placed on developing heavy industry
Widespread theft, bribery and corruption, conflicting with
declared ideals of socialist society
Bureaucratization of Soviet life
A Favorite Topic: The Communal Apartment
To deal with housing shortage, Communist government converted
many large apartments into “communal” apartments
Several families shared a kitchen and bathroom, with each family
having only one room of their own
Separate rooms often created by adding thin plywood walls, causing
lack of privacy
Many conflicts among strangers forced to share such close quarters
– a favorite target of satirical literature
Reading and Discussion of Zoshchenko’s
Short Stories – Small Groups
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Group 1: “Crisis” and “Guests”
Group 2: “Nervous People” and “Hard Labour”
Group 3: “Red Tape” and “Of Lamp-shades”
Read and discuss the selected two stories in your small group.
Give a brief synopsis of the two stories to the entire group.
Comment on what the stories illustrate about Soviet life in the
1920s under NEP.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-)
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Studied physics and mathematics at Rostov University and
completed correspondence course in literature, 1936-41.
Served as officer in Soviet military during Great Patriotic War
against Germany, 1942-45. Arrested at the front for making
critical comments about Stalin in personal correspondence.
Sentenced to eight years of hard labor.
Confined in prison camps, 1945-53, including a camp in
Kazakhstan for political prisoners only in 1950-53. Conditions in
this camp would be reflected in his famous story One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (continued)
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Spent three years of exile in Kazakhstan before being permitted
to return to European Russia in 1956.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, new Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev begins “de-Stalinization” campaign in 1956 and
denounces Stalinist terror. In the context of this cultural “thaw,”
Solzhenitsyn is permitted to publish Ivan Denisovich in the Soviet
literary journal Novy Mir in 1962 (but it is later banned).
After Khrushchev is ousted and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev in
1964, Solzhenitsyn is prevented from publishing most of his
work in the Soviet Union and can publish only abroad.
Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature, 1970.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, continued
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Deported to West Germany, 1974.
Moved to Vermont, USA, 1976.
Upon collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the 1974 charge of
treason against Solzhenitsyn was annulled.
Moved back to Russia in 1994.
Background Information: The Soviet Gulag System
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag)
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Penal system of forced labor camps operated by the NKVD
(secret police)
Held political prisoners as well as common criminals
Most located in remote areas of Siberia or Central Asia
Some camp facilities set up as early as 1918 as extension of labor
camps operated in tsarist Russia
GULAG (Russian acronym) officially established as a
department of the secret police in 1930
Major growth of prison camp population through 1930s as
prison labor was used for industrialization efforts
The Soviet Gulag System, continued
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Mass arrests during Great Terror in 1937-38 led to hundreds of
thousands being sentenced to long prison terms for
“counterrevolutionary activities,” mostly arbitrarily
Over 1.5 million people in Gulag system by 1939
Gulag population declined during Second World War, as
hundreds of thousands of inmates were conscripted into
military service
Increased again after war, to 2.5 million in early 1950s, including
hundreds of thousands of former soldiers accused of treason
for such “offenses” as being having been captured by Germans,
liberated from concentration camps by Americans, etc.
The Soviet Gulag System, continued
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Gulag system declined after Stalin’s death in 1953, most camps
closed down by end of 1950s
GULAG officially dissolved in 1960
18-20 million people were held in Gulag at some point during
Stalinist period, with over 1.6 million documented deaths
Deaths resulted from disease, malnutrition, overwork and
exposure (due to inadequate food, clothing and medical care),
and brutal treatment by guards and fellow prisoners
Once released, former prisoners were often prohibited from
living in major Russian cities or holding a wide range of jobs, so
they could not return to former homes and occupations
Background Information on One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich
Solzhenitsyn sought to portray a typical day in the life of an
ordinary camp inmate, the peasant Ivan Denisovich Shukhov
Wrote in Russian 19th century realist tradition: “The great Russian
prose writers of the last century took pride in the way their
works addressed and reflected the actual historical, social, or
moral conditions of their homeland. Literary achievement was
not seen in the ability of a powerful imagination to create a vivid
fictional world […] but rather in the writer’s skill in selecting,
shaping and ordering the data of reality.” – Alexis Klimoff, One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Critical Companion, p. 6
Background Info on One Day…, continued
Story takes place in January 1951 at a “Special Camp” for political
prisoners in Central Asia
Special Camps allowed prisoners to write only two letters home per
year, and denied them even token payment for hard labor
performed
Ivan Denisovich is imprisoned for “treason” after having been
briefly captured by Germans during the war (he escaped); many
fellow prisoners for similar reasons
Story is told from Ivan’s viewpoint as a simple, honest man without
strong political beliefs who is mainly concerned about day-to-day
survival
Excerpts from One Day…
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First 12 pages: morning routine, reveille, illness, cold (p. 10:
prisoners not made to work outdoors if temperature was under
– 41 degrees C, = – 41.8 degrees F! Length of workday
mentioned later in book: 11 hours.)
“There is no worse moment than when you turn out for work
parade in the morning. In the dark, in the freezing cold, with a
hungry belly, and the whole day ahead of you. You lose the
power of speech. You haven’t the slightest desire to talk to each
other.” (p. 28)
Excerpts from One Day… continued
“Since he’d been in the camps Shukhov had thought many a time
of the food they used to eat in the village – whole frying pans
full of potatoes, porridge by the caldron, and […] great hefty
lumps of meat. Milk they used to lap up till their bellies were
bursting. But he knew better now that he’d been inside. He’d
learned to keep his whole mind on the food he was eating. Like
now he was taking tiny little nibbles of bread […] Dry black
bread it was, but like that nothing could be tastier. How much
had he eaten in the last eight or nine years? Nothing. And how
hard had he worked? Don’t ask.” (p. 50)
Excerpts from One Day… continued
“Shukhov […] no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or
not. To begin with, he’d wanted it very much, and counted up
every evening how many days he still had to serve. Then he’d got
fed up with it. And still later it had gradually dawned on him that
people like himself were not allowed to go home but were
packed off into exile. And there was no knowing where the
living was easier – here or there.” (p. 178)
Last line of story: “Just one of the 3,653 days of his sentence, from
bell to bell. The extra three were for leap years.” (p. 182)
Conclusions
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Various challenges and opportunities with using these texts as a
teaching tool
Historical details in Doctor Zhivago are embedded in a very long
and complex narrative – assigning entire book could be
appropriate for an advanced literature class, but less so for
history/social studies
Using film version might be helpful to provide students with
outline of story, while using excerpts from novel such as those
we read to point out realistic historical details that were not
emphasized in film
Conclusions, continued
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Zoshchenko stories are short and easily digestible, but will
require some background information to be presented by teacher
or through other, factual reading assignments
Students could be asked to respond by writing their own
humorous short stories about, for example, what they think it
would be like to live in a communal apartment
Satire “humanizes” Soviet history that is usually presented very
seriously; may help students to see beyond ideological conflicts
and view Russians as ordinary people with problems they could
imagine having
Conclusions, continued
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a short text (<200 pages)
that could easily be assigned in its entirety, with some
background information provided by teacher
Could be used to provoke broader discussion on authoritarian vs.
democratic political systems and justice systems (arbitrary
punishment of ordinary people for offenses such as “treason”);
can any similar contemporary examples be found?
Could also stimulate creative writing assignments focusing on life
in prison camps (e.g., imagine that you are spending a day in the
Gulag and describe your experiences)
Conclusions, continued
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Other ideas for how you might use any of these materials in your
classroom? Discuss.
What kind of follow-up would you like to see from this
workshop? For example, a website maintained at Pitt where you
could submit ideas or lesson plans you developed on this topic;
links to other information resources related to this topic; other?
Resources currently offered by Pitt/REES for K-12 educators:
resource lending library, school visits program, outreach
newsletter, other professional development workshops for all
world areas through UCIS
Outreach World, www.outreachworld.org
Bibliography
Clowes, Edith W., ed. Doctor Zhivago: A Critical Companion. Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press/AATSEEL, 1995.
Klimoff, Alexis, ed. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Critical
Companion. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press/AATSEEL, 1997.
Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago. Trans. Max Hayward and Manya
Harari. New York: Pantheon, 1958.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Trans.
H.T. Willetts. New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1991.
Zoshchenko, Mikhail. The Galosh and Other Stories. Trans. Jeremy
Hicks. London: Angel, 2000.
Contact Information
Gina Peirce
412-648-2290
gbpeirce@ucis.pitt.edu
www.ucis.pitt.edu/crees