In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

142 7 “Life Is a Succession of Disappointments” a soviet girl contends with the stalinist dictatorship e. thomas ewing In the spring of 1934, a Soviet teenager, Nina Lugovskaya, recorded the following entry in her diary: The last few days I’ve sometimes wanted so much to tell someone everything , to open up completely, to shout: “I want to live! Why do you torment me, force me to go to school, teach me manners? I don’t need anything! I want to live, laugh, sing, and be happy. I’m only fifteen years old, you know, that’s the best time of life. I want to live! Teach me to live!” But I won’t tell anyone this truth. They wouldn’t understand, they’d only make fun of me. I don’t even need them to understand, all I’m asking is that they take my thoughts seriously. The other day when I told Papa I was bored, he just laughed at me and said: “I hate people who always say, ‘I’m bored, I’m bored.’” “Well you can be sure I’ll never say that to you again!” I shot back. The same thing happened with Mama.1 At first glance, this entry appears representative of a developmental stage in the lives of adolescent girls: the challenge to conventional rules and restrictions as represented by the school and the family; the escapist desire to sing, dance, and be happy; and the conflict with parents whose guidance is both sought and rejected. Lugovskaya’s sentiments match many of the psychological traits assumed to be characteristic of adolescence, including rapid emotional shifts, alienation from parents, and a desire for individual autonomy.2 Such presumptions of the universality of girls’ lives need to be situated in specific historical circumstances, however. At the time of this diary entry, Lugovskaya’s father, who so contemptuously rejected her feelings of boredom , was the target of political repression, having been exiled from the city of Moscow, and was subject at any time to arrest, imprisonment, and even death. The family home had already been searched by the security police, and Lugovskaya’s own diary was a source of political vulnerability, as she “Life Is a Succession of Disappointments” 143 admitted in numerous entries. The “manners” that she was being taught included not just how to behave in the family, school, and society, but also how to conform to the emerging Stalinist dictatorship.3 The desire to live, which is repeated throughout the diary, acquires specific meaning in a context in which the threat of death hangs over citizens, particularly those, like Lugovskaya’s family, who had already been targeted for political repression . The desire to live may have been an expression of teenage rebellion against boring routine, but in this context, this desire was also a challenge to the dictatorship that had appropriated the power to determine life and death. Born one year after the establishment of communism in Russia, Lugovskaya was a child of a revolutionary generation in that her entire life was shaped by the expanding power of the Soviet system. Her first ten years during the 1920s were spent in the relative stability of the New Economic Policy, but she experienced adolescence in the 1930s—a time of growing fear, suspicion, surveillance, and punishment. Lugovskaya used her diary as a means to understand, and also to document the experience of living in these extraordinary times. Her sentiment that “Life is a succession of disappointments ”4 clearly illustrates the traumatic effects of constantly negotiating her own sense of reality with that imposed by the communist regime. Educated by a government that promised to build communism for the future, Lugovskaya was a victim of the same system that she conformed to, even as she struggled, internally and through her diary, to define her identity in opposition to the regime’s repressive power. A close reading of this diary also demonstrates that the political context was only one, and not always the dominant, influence on the girl’s experiences , identity, and practices. Her sense of acute disappointment, which is quoted in the title of this chapter, was a response not to political repression but to her own family: Life is a succession of disappointments. Ever since I can remember I’ve been disappointed . First came my disappointment in people, and then my bitter and painful disappointment in life. I remember a time when the world seemed wonderful to me...

Share