Conflicts in the Soviet Countryside in the Novellas of Valentin Rasputin

Conflicts in the Soviet Countryside in the Novellas ofValentin Rasputin Julian Laychuk University of Calgary The Siberian writer Valentin Rasputin achieved prominence and popularity with Soviet and, later, western readers as a result of his four major novellas (povesti), written over an eight-year span from 1968 to 1976.1 Like Valentin Ovechkin and Efim Dorosh before him, Rasputin carried on the comparatively recent practice of focusing on the village theme and village people—one that had been somewhat neglected by Soviet writers following the official adoption of socialist realism at the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934. Production novels proliferated at that time and for years to come, but they normally dealt with huge industrialization projects being implemented by proletarian shock-workers, among whom the most advanced and perspicacious filled the role of the exemplary "new Soviet man," the positive hero oftoil expected by literary officialdom and, even more important, by the political authorities responsible for cultural matters. On the other hand, the countryside was given much less attention, peopled as it was by largely uneducated, if not downright primitive bumpkins, who could hardly have any worthwhile views or broad perspectives on the glorious future that awaited the nation upon the attainment of communism. The poverty-stricken collectivized Soviet kolkhozniks meanwhile suffered under terrible material and cultural privations, while the authorities continued to promulgate the myth of a thriving collectivized agriculture.2 Just before Stalin's death, a noticeable change occurred under official auspices when Valentin Ovechkin's essays began to appear in print; he attempted to present a more truthful picture of the countryside, in the hope that at least some of the iniquities and problems everywhere apparent would be addressed.3 During the Khrushchev years more attention to and investment in agriculture were the order ofthe day: initiatives included a reduction in the size of private plots, the imposition of various new taxes, the economically inadvisable promotion of and focus on corn cultivation , and the introduction of Machine-Tractor Stations, which was both a measure of control and a move toward mechanization. Then the virgin lands of Kazakhstan were opened up. The economic benefits of that grandiose scheme were, however, disappointing, both 11 12Rocky Mountain Review because of topographical and meteorological considerations, and, more important, administrative and systemic shortcomings. The emphasis on agriculture was also felt on the literary front, as a number of writers attempted to describe in more truthful terms actual conditions on the collective and state farms. The primary cause of the malaise in the countryside, however, continued to be the insistence on the preservation of collectivized agriculture. Even Khrushchev did not have the option of dismantling the system of collectivization; the alternative—tinkering with the edges of the problem, making spotty, stop-gap, inconsistent, and incoherent changes here and there—proved to be ineffective, and, following Khrushchev's downfall in the mid-1960s, agriculture continued in the doldrums, and living conditions of the peasantry were primitive and poor. With the emergence ofBrezhnev, matters did not improve, as conservatism on all fronts made a comeback, and even the schemes of his predecessor—the tinkering referred to above—fell into disrepute in favor oftime-worn, basically Stalinist formulas. It was at this time that Valentin Rasputin emerged on the literary scene with the publication of his first mature work, the 1967 novella Den'gi dlia Marii (Money for Maria).4 Over the next decade he was to write three more: Poslednii srok (1970) (The Final Stage), Zhivi i pomni (1974) (Live and Remember), and Proshchanie s Materoi (1976) (Farewell to Matyora). In all of these works, the material conditions of the peasants serve as a backdrop to the various personal, social, or moral crises which the protagonists confront. A number of sub-themes run through the works, to a greater or lesser extent: the loss of identity on the part of many country folk who have abandoned the village for the regional center and the cities; the conflict between the village and the town, manifested in a widespread incomprehension and distrust of one for the other; the belief in the wisdom of the old ways and traditions of country folk and...