THE GOULAG ARCHIPELAGO FROM A FEMININE PERSPECTIVE
by
Daniel Dragomirescu
[Previously published in The
End of a Dictatorship by Daniel
Dragomirescu (PIM Publishing House’s “Bibliotheca Universalis” Collection,
Iasi, Romania, 2015)]
The Stalinist era, with all its implications for
the individuals and for society in the biggest country of the world, produced a
literature which excels in dimension and complexity. A relevant example is
Nadejda Mandelstam’s novel, published in Romanian at Polirom, Iasi bearing the
suggestive title “Hopeless” (in Russian hope
is the equivalent of nadejda). The
book is not only as an exceptional documentary value, but also a literary
masterpiece, highlighting the cultural and literary life during the Stalinist
era, as well as the relationships between writers and the Bolshevik power
settled by means of mass rebellion and off-stage manoeuvres in that remarkable
1917 at Petrograd (later Leningrad, today Sankt Petersburg). The book is first
of all a genuine monument which the author dedicates to her husband, Osip
Mandelstam, an important Russian poet and a relevant example on the endless
list of nonconformist Russian
intellectuals who fell a prey to the Bolshevik pressure during the first decade
of the previous century.
Actually,
the book is a genuine novel, in many respects similar to “The Gulag
Archipelago”, by Al. Soljenitin. Throughout those hundreds of pages, we follow
up breathlessly, feeling both horror and compassion for the tragic destiny of a
character - a Russian Orthodox Jew, Osip Mandelstam - who made proof of an
exceptional consciousness in an era which he had the bad fortune to be
contemporaneous with. By all account, the man sometimes falls short to the
artist’s worthiness. Unfortunately, we have enough examples, from the tragic XX
century, which testify this hypothesis; there are a lot of popular Romanian
writers who- helas!- sided with the
totalitarian regime after August 23rd 1944, on the ground that they were actually
protecting their work, and not trying to achieve a privileged social statute.
In the vast space of the Russian culture, such an example is the novelist A.N
Tolstoy who was deservedly slapped in public by Osip Mandelstam. At the counter
pole stands - the tragic destiny of the
acmeist poet, Gumiliov (the acmeism was an expression of the Russian literary
avant-garde, which was very popular at the beginning of the XX century, before
the Revolution and a few years
after), who was brutally assassinated /
executed in the first decade of the 1920’s
for his stately and conscious attitude looked upon as a defiance hinting
at the Soviet power (just like the French poet, Andre Chenier who, more than a
century ago, was the victim of the Great French Revolution).
The
case of Osip Mandelstan - whose name is brilliantly abbreviated O.M (= homme, man; in Russian, celovek) in the Romanian translation –
gives the reader an excellent example which proves by means of facts, and not
of words that the worthiness of Mandelstan, the
man, kept up to the mark of Mandelstan, the poet, in extremely harsh
historical circumstances. Osip Mandelstam’s destiny represents the most
eloquent example of what humanness means in an era marked by tragedy: to refuse
the temptation of the compromise, cost what it may.
The
author narrates with evocative talent and very accurately, in more then 80
chapters and over 500 pages, various stories and experiences which marked her
destiny in a blazing and decisive way, especially in the roaring ‘30’s, the era
of the great Stalinist repressions, which rolled over the Orthodox Russian
people who, due to some historical fatalities, became the guinea pig of a
social system which was supposed to institute humanism throughout the world, in
the broadest and most authentic sense of the word (but the distance from theory
to practice was once again enormous).
The
Odyssey of Nadejdea and Osip Mandelstam began in 1943, when - as a consequence
of a comminatory poem against Stalin (reproduced at the end of the volume) -
the poet has been arrested for the first time and the two outcasts were forced
to leave Moscow, in order to live in the obligatory residence in Cerdan and
then in Voronej, far-away urban regions located on the vast territory of the
Soviet Union. The Odyssey which took place in the historical era of great
theoretical expectations and of factual hopelessness ended up with the
permanent separation of Nadejda - this genuine itinerant Penelope - from her
husband who had been deported in a concentration camp from the Far East, which
was practically located at the end of the world; it was there where he died
without any specification regarding the date and the circumstances, as we can
read in the short note at the end of the book: “ the date of his death was not
established. And I can’t do anything to find it out.”
The
book which is as I’ve already mentioned, a genuine novel based only on real
facts (“reality goes beyond fiction”) might be interpreted as a touching record
of a woman’s devotion for the men she loves, and whom she follows to the bitter
end and whom she would never abandon, just like those famous female
characters belonging to the great XIX
century Russian literature.
The
Romanian version is well translated due to Nicolae Iliescu and it has a very
good review and it includes extensive end notes (a veritable dictionary of
cultural figures from Stalinist Russia epoch) and a rich introduction, written
by Livia Cotorcea. The Romanian translation of the satiric poem pointing at
Stalin, the one which represented the main charge against Osip Mandelstam the
day he was arrested in 1934, is the work of the late Slavist and specialist in
Russian literature, Emil Iordache.
“Hopeless” is a remarkable reference book, written in an emphatic and
intense narrative style whose message ought to be remembered and whose
instructions must not be ignored or minimized, because a society which forgets
its past too easy is sooner or later condemned to reiterate it in new shapes
which are not less dreadful.
Daniel
Dragomirescu is a Romanian writer and journalist born in Bucharest.
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