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112 Chapter Three Virgin Russia Meets Lenin and Stalin: The Soviet Years T E C H N I C A L LY S P E A K I N G , a discussion of bridal Russia representations in Soviet culture would encompass the years 1917 through 1990. This chapter focuses solely on the period between the late 1920s and the late 1960s, however. There are reasons for this perhaps unconventional categorization. In the previous chapter we saw that 1920s (and even some 1930s) renditions of the metaphor tend to be mere repetitions of moves by authors who had used the same concept earlier. Most of them were written in emigration and were utterly inaccessible to Russian readers at the time of writing. In addition, the end of the 1920s marks the onset of what Billington calls a “new monolithic culture”—a cultural era that coincides with Stalin’s consolidation of power and replaces the experimental, cosmopolitan atmosphere that had prevailed until well into the 1920s.1 This uniform culture is unable to ban dissident voices completely, however, and in the 1960s it begins to dissipate gradually. From the late 1960s on, artistic developments take place that should be linked to international postmodernism rather than to a strictly Soviet setting. These developments are discussed in more detail in the next chapter. The focus here is on the presence of the metaphor in the intervening years. At first glance, the gendered metaphor seems to disappear during this time. The very specific metaphor of Russia as unattainable bride is indeed missing from official Soviet culture. Elements of pre-revolutionary philosophical discourse do leave their mark on socialist realist art, though. In fact, socialist realism preserves several symbols and dichotomies that had typified intellectual debate during the early decades of the century. As Katerina Clark asserts in 1981, Soviet literature uses “signs” which “encapsulate the polemics and dilemmas of the Russian intelligentsia that have been constant from at least the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.”2 One of these signs is the spontaneous-conscious antithesis to which the late-imperial intellectual elite reverted in discussions on the people-and-intelligentsia issue. Chapter Three 113 In Leninist and socialist realist discourse, this dichotomy is preserved and “transcoded” to the Soviet context.3 Lenin’s rhetoric, for example, “is full of imagery about bringing ‘light’ to the ‘darkness’ of the Russian people”—an act that he views as a triumph of the consciousness of intellectuals over the spontaneity of the people.4 It is difficult not to see the similarities between this rhetoric and, in particular, Berdiaev’s opposition of people to intelligentsia in terms of dark versus light or spontaneity versus consciousness. In Lenin’s rendition, however , the terminology does not appear within the problematic gendered context so typical of the early twentieth century: he focuses on an oncoming union between workers and intellectuals rather than on the lack of such a union, and he does not allegorize their contact in gendered terms. This is not to say that female representations of Russia were uncommon in formal Soviet culture. According to Hans Günther, “in the 1930s we constantly encounter a parallel modeling of a woman and the Native land, a woman and the earth and so on.”5 The tendency to personify Russia as a female figure also flourished during the Second World War. As Lynne Attwood points out, a number of Soviet films feature “war heroines [who] symbolize both the Soviet Union and its moral fortitude.”6 Pat Simpson discerns a trend in the early 1940s to lay “particular emphasis on the mother as incarnation of the Motherland” in paintings and posters.7 These personifications should be regarded within the context of the Stalinist myth of the “great family.” In Clark’s words, in the “great family” myth “the society’s leaders became ‘fathers’ . . . ; the national heroes, model ‘sons’; the state, a ‘family’ or ‘tribe.’”8 Günther’s studies have shown that, within this myth, Russia or the Russian earth fulfills the role of archetypal nurturing mother.9 Accordingly, research did pick up on allegorical representations of Soviet Russia as a mother. It has paid less attention to the bridal or erotic connotations that this figure can acquire. Yet such connotations are far from uncommon in Soviet literature and art. Lebedev-Kumach’s lyrics to “March of the Native Land” (“Marsh o rodine”), for example—sung in the popular Soviet musical Circus (Tsirk, 1936)—conclude with “Like a bride we love...

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