Erotic Nihilism in Late Imperial Russia: The Case of Mikhail Artsybashev's Sanin

2. Sanin: A Hero of Our Time?

2 Sanin A Hero of Our Time? On Sunday morning, January 9, 1905, a massive crowd of demonstrators from various parts of St. Petersburg set off in the direction of the Winter Palace with the aim of presenting the tsar with a petition. The document contained far-reaching economic and political demands, but they were formulated as a humble request in which the tsar was respectfully addressed as the “father.” To demonstrate their peaceful intentions, the marchers carried icons, portraits of the tsar, and a large banner urging the soldiers not to open fire. As an ultimate deterrent , women and children were placed in the front ranks of the procession . Despite these signals of appeasement, the crowd would never reach its destination. At Narva Gate and other places in the city, soldiers were quick to open fire on the demonstrators, leaving two hundred people dead and eight hundred wounded.1 “Bloody Sunday” marked the beginning of what later became known as the Revolution of 1905. It sparked a wave of strikes, demonstrations, mutinies, and riots that would cripple the country for nearly two years. The famous October manifesto, which initially provided for a considerable extension of the franchise and granted freedom of speech, was welcomed with elation but did not stop the more radical factions from continuing to oppose the regime. Violence sprang up in the countryside as well, where looting became common. The turbulence did not subside until 1907, when Prime Minister Stolypin’s repressive measures began to prove successful. By August 1907 it was clear that order had been restored and that the revolution was over. 51 This brief summary of the main events of Russia’s “failed” revolution is essential to an understanding of why Sanin was considered such a topical novel and its protagonist a new “hero of our time.” While the various factions across the political spectrum disagreed as to the deeper meaning of the “Saninist” mentality, many of them agreed that the events of 1905–7 were instrumental in producing it. To elucidate the nexus between the political events and the perceived mentality that Artsybashev’s hero came to embody, I begin with a detailed account of the novel’s publication history and the implications this history proved to have for its reception as a “reactionary” text (intervention by the censor is discussed in chapter 4). After a brief excursion into the generic specificity of the tendentious novel, I continue the discussion of “superfluous men” and “heroes of our time” from chapter 1, paying close attention to the writings of critics who relied on the device of the literary analogy. The name that stands out, particularly in this connection, is that of Turgenev’s fictitious character Evgenii Bazarov. Subsequently, I turn to observers who did not believe Saninism to be a vestige of the 1860s but, on the contrary, saw Artsybashev’s hero as a typical representative of the “new” capitalist Russia that Stolypin was trying to create .An analysis of Zinaida Hippius’s “anti-Saninist” novel ADevil’s Doll concludes this chapter. Concentrating mainly on the reactions of the literary establishment (writers of highbrow literature, critics publishing in the prestigious “thick” journals), this chapter argues that, for all the variety of interpretations that were put forward, there was also a common tendency to cast Vladimir Sanin in the role of social or political Other. Allegedly a mouthpiece for an entire generation, Sanin was never “claimed” by any group as its main figurehead. This leaves us with a paradox: “Saninism ” was supposedly rampant among the intelligentsia but the Saninist himself was hardly ever heard. The embeddedness of the Saninist’s voice in the disapproving discourse of his critics is a peculiarity overlooked by many commentators and scholars. Publication and First Reactions The period following the events of 1905–7, which virtually lasted until the collapse of the monarchy in 1917, has often been referred to as the “stagnant years” (bezvremen’e) or the “years of reaction.” Qualifications such as these articulate the frustration of those, such as the Bolshevists 52 Sanin and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had placed their hopes on the immediate elimination of the tsarist regime. And yet, for all the tendentiousness of these labels, the very reality of a political reaction cannot be denied. Even if the tsar had technically ceased to be an autocrat by granting parliament legislative functions, he was highly reluctant to accept the new reality...