Slavic Sins of the Flesh: Food, Sex, and Carnal Appetite in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction

4. Carnality and Morality in Fin de Siècle and Revolutionary Russia

Carnality and Morality in Fin de Siècle and Revolutionary Russia Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the Zoological Self The shadow cast by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the two giants of the great nineteenth-century Russian novel, on the literature , culture, and intellectual life of late imperial Russia is indisputably enormous. Although their influence may have been felt most strongly in quite different cultural and philosophical spheres (Dostoevsky’s upon turn-of-the-century religiousphilosophers,forexample;Tolstoy’suponsocialactivists and cultural dissidents), both left a lasting imprint—as writers as well as thinkers—on generations of Russians to come. The memorable characters who populated their novels , as well as the provocative ideas that informed their nonfiction , took on a life that extended long after their authors’ deaths (Dostoevsky in 1881, Tolstoy in 1910). Their immediateinfluenceonthesubsequentgenerationofRussianwriters and thinkers, however, is especially pertinent to many of the issues in this book: one’s attitude toward the desiring body, the nature of physical appetite, the relationship between carnivorousness and sensuality, the purported remedies of asceticism and vegetarianism, and so on. As the process of modernization accelerated in late imperial Russia and as traditional conceptualizations of human nature began to be more seriously challenged, the twin corporeal concerns of food and sex assumed an even more prominent position in public and artistic discourse in Russia. The legacy of DostoevskyandTolstoyinmattersinvolvingcarnalityandmoral ity ,asweshallseeinthischapter,madeitselffeltinanumber of ways in turn-of-the-century and revolutionary Russia. 4 An especially significant area involved discussions of the human animal, especially his sexual nature. The wide dissemination within Russian society of Darwin’s theories in particular and of materialist philosophy in general, along with the appearance of works of literary “naturalism” by writers such as Emile Zola, helped to generate a lively debate about the animal nature of human beings. Darwin’s theories contributed to the public conversation about the so-called zoological self, largely by calling into question the uniquely human (if not divine) properties of man. They also prompted the use of animal metaphors— especially metaphors of predatory animals—in works of literature by writers who sought to emphasize the instinctual and elemental aspects of human behavior, both in the private sphere (sexual life) and the public sphere (socioeconomic relations). Different writers, of course, conceived of man’s animal nature in different ways and used different animals to characterize human beings. Where Dostoevsky’s human bestiary, as we saw in an earlier chapter, is populated by predatory creatures who “devour” others by ensnaring and then eating up their defenseless prey, Tolstoy’s notion of human appetite focuses instead on what he calls our “animal personality” (26:347): that part of our inner self that strives instinctively for the gratification of egoistic desires , particularly the basic physical pleasures provided by food and sex. Where Dostoevsky’s human animals are invariably wild beasts of prey (wolves, reptiles, spiders, tarantulas), Tolstoy’s are more likely to be domesticated but still selfish, greedy, and pleasure-seeking creatures, such as cattle, horses,dogs,andpigs,wholiveonlytofilltheirownbellies and to satisfy the urges of their loins.1 If Dostoevsky’s views on gastronomical and sexual desire were largely reduced in fin de siècle and revolutionary Russia to a bestial, bloodthirsty “Dostoevskyism,” then those of Tolstoy were associated with a much less feral “Tolstoyism,” which advanced a hyper-Christian ethos advocating pacifism, vegetarianism , celibacy, and nonresistance to evil. Although there were some contemporaries who voiced a clarion call for a “Red Tolstoy” to appear upon the impoverished literary scene in early Soviet Russia, most Bolshevik leaders and moral commentators during the 1920s were much lessconcernedaboutTolstoyasanovelist,thanaboutTolstoyasamoralreligious ideologue whose followers had created a movement that now competed quite vigorously with Bolshevism in the contest to win over the hearts and minds of the idealistic young.2 The “revolutionary ascarnality and morality | 159 160 | slavic sins of the flesh ceticism” and “revolutionary sublimation” that early Bolshevik commentators advocated for Communist youth stood the very real risk of being preempted (and thus trumped) by the Tolstoyan message of sexual abstinence he and his radical Christian followers preached.3 In this chapter we shall be examining how one or the other of these two opposing conceptualizations of the human animal—the Dostoevskian notion of predatory “bestiality” (zverstvo) or the Tolstoyan idea of hedonistic “animality” (zhivotnost’)—was appropriated by a number of writers in fin de siècle and revolutionary Russia who were concerned with the nature of human sexual desire. The choice these...