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120 Conclusion Writers Forward! Calm yourselves, Gentlemen! First of all, we are discussing party literature and its subordination to party control. Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. —Vladimir Lenin, “Party Organization and Party Literature” (1905) A S T H E 1 9 2 0 S C A M E T O A N E N D , proletarian groups increasingly touted Lenin’s 1905 article on party literature as the definitive statement not only about party writers but about any writer in Soviet society: “Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat , ‘a cog and screw’ of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class.”1 As the 1920s progressed, satirists, who had occupied a prominent role in early Soviet literature, were forced to narrow their aim as systemic problems—party problems—became taboo targets; Richard Chapple in the closing lines of his study of 1920s Soviet satire writes that after 1934 satire met its “demise,” acquiring “a monotonous tone that . . . overshadowed efforts to revitalize it.”2 And the fantastic, so prevalent in the 1920s, also fell under attack as doubt became tantamount to counterrevolution. A manifesto of the October literary group declared: “All ideological doubts are absolutely inadmissible, and we shall make a point of bringing them to light.”3 Literary utopias, journeys to other planets, and alternate realities were all seen to point to a lack here on present-day Earth, and as the 1920s drew to a close, proletarians became increasingly hostile to these devices, demanding instead a return to “everyday” proletarian life. Aleksandr Bezymensky wrote: “It’s fine to toss the planets about as though they were little lumps of something, and in galvanic verse to celebrate the cosmos. But can you show us the dawn of the future in some chairman of a lumber commis- Writers Forward! 121 sariat. . . . Give up the heavens, forget about things, and give us instead the earth and living people.”4 By 1932 the time for dwelling on problems of the past and dreams of the future were over—the focus shifted to construction of the here and now. Richard Stites sees the publication of Jan Larri’s The Land of the Happy (1931), the last communist utopia to be published during Stalin’s lifetime,5 as the official end of the 1920s: “The death of utopian science fiction in the early 1930s is the perfect metaphor of the death of the utopian revolution of the 1920s.”6 When Russian folklore was “rediscovered” in the 1930s it served only to support Soviet nationalism,7 and the social and moral speculation found in Western science fiction was eschewed by socialist realist writers who won praise only for popularizing science or preparing the way for scientific innovation.8 It has been the thesis of this book, however, that satire and the fantastic did not just vanish or move underground with the official adoption of socialist realism. Instead their energies were channeled into the figure of the villain. Satirical exposure of the beast and the alien are the first step in a strategy that ends in the purging of textual hesitation, accomplished by cleansing the reactionary impulses of the villain and then translating them into a new collective voice. Although I have argued that satire and the fantastic constitute a vital part of socialist realism, satirical exposure and fantastic hesitation vanish before the concluding triumphal scene of a socialist realist text, thereby clearing the way for a conclusive vision of “reality in its revolutionary development.” Through the use of fantastic hesitation, the hero rejects the villain and is cleansed of the villain’s negative qualities; in theory at least, the reader would follow his example and through the act of reading move into that socialist realist land beyond doubt. I have also argued, however, that a dystopian fear accompanies this strategy, and that Soviet literary culture becomes increasingly centered on controlling the influence of the Soviet villain and conclusively silencing his toxic voice. REALLY REAL MEN, OR APOLOGIES FOR THE ELEPHANT Toward the end of Time Forward! a letter is inserted attesting that the novel was drawn from real life: “I hope that you will not reproach me especially for having made up some things. For example...

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