Happiness and toska: An essay in the history of emotions in pre-war Soviet Russia

Australian Journal of Politics and History

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 357-371

  Fitzpatrick, Sheila ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 8744233789     PISSN: 00049522     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8497.2004.00339.x     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (75)

1. For example, Jochen Hellbeck, "Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-9," in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London, 2000), and Jochen Hellbeck, "Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s," in David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds, Russian Modernity. Politics, Knowledge, Practices (New York, 2000); Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, 1999); Anna Krylova, "Healers of Wounded Souls: The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944-1946", Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, 2 (2001); Igal Halfin, Terror in the Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
2. For example, Jochen Hellbeck, "Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-9," in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London, 2000), and Jochen Hellbeck, "Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s," in David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds, Russian Modernity. Politics, Knowledge, Practices (New York, 2000); Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, 1999); Anna Krylova, "Healers of Wounded Souls: The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944-1946", Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, 2 (2001); Igal Halfin, Terror in the Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
3. For example, Jochen Hellbeck, "Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-9," in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London, 2000), and Jochen Hellbeck, "Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s," in David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds, Russian Modernity. Politics, Knowledge, Practices (New York, 2000); Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, 1999); Anna Krylova, "Healers of Wounded Souls: The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944-1946", Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, 2 (2001); Igal Halfin, Terror in the Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
4. For example, Jochen Hellbeck, "Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-9," in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London, 2000), and Jochen Hellbeck, "Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s," in David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds, Russian Modernity. Politics, Knowledge, Practices (New York, 2000); Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, 1999); Anna Krylova, "Healers of Wounded Souls: The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944-1946", Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, 2 (2001); Igal Halfin, Terror in the Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
5. For example, Jochen Hellbeck, "Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-9," in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London, 2000), and Jochen Hellbeck, "Self-Realization in the Stalinist System: Two Soviet Diaries of the 1930s," in David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis, eds, Russian Modernity. Politics, Knowledge, Practices (New York, 2000); Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, 1999); Anna Krylova, "Healers of Wounded Souls: The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944-1946", Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, 2 (2001); Igal Halfin, Terror in the Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
6. See Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), ch. 5 ("Speaking Bolshevik").
7. A. Afinogenov, Strakh (Leningrad, 1932), p. 4.
8. Rolf was the organizer of a conference on this theme, "Rausch und Diktatur", held at the Humboldt University, Berlin, 6-7 December 2002. This is the basis for a planned special issue on "Rausch" in the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft in fall 2003.
9. Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Civil War (Princeton, 2000), ch. 4 ("The Economy of the Gift: 'Thank You, Comrade Stalin, for a Happy Childhood'").
10. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants. Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization (New York and Oxford, 1994), ch. 9 ("Malice").
11. Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Vengeance and Ressentiment in the Russian Revolution", French Historical Studies, Vol. 24, 4 (Fall, 2001).
12. Anna Krylova, "Soviet Modernity in Life and Fiction: The Generation of the 'New Soviet People' in the 1930s", PhD. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2000, chapter "In Defense of Those Who Love".
13. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, 2001).
14. Pasha Angelina, Liudi kolkhoznykh polei (Moscow, 1948), p. 26.
15. Diary of Galina Vladimirovna Shtange, in Veronique Garros, Natalia Korenevskaya and Thomas Lahusen, eds, Intimacy and Terror. Soviet Diaries of the 1930s (New York, 1995), p. 206
16. Agrippina Korevanova, extract from "My Life" (1938), in Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine, eds, In the Shadow of Revolution. Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War (Princeton, 2000), pp. 195-6.
17. Andrey Platonov, Happy Moscow, trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. (London, 2001). p. 9.
18. Vladimir Kabo, The Road to Australia. Memoirs, trans. Rosh Ireland and Kevin Windle (Canberra, 1998), p. 35.
19. Nor are there any memories of anticipatory happiness in the opera singer Galina Vishnevskaia's account of her hard-scrabble childhood: Galina Vishnevskaya, Galina: A Russian Story, trans. Guy Daniels (San Diego, 1984).
20. Yuri Slezkine, "Lives as Tales", Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow of Revolution, p. 30.
21. Industriia, 1 January 1938, p. 3.
22. Geroini sotsialisticheskogo truda (Moscow, 1936), pp. 128-9.
23. Ibid., p. 40.
24. Trud, 8 March 1936, p. 3.
25. Sh.Ia. Gadiliaeva, from In the Shadow of Revolution, pp. 337-8.
26. Korevanova, from In the Shadow of the Revolution, p. 195.
27. Quoted in Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!, p. 93.
28. Diary of Leonid Alekseyevich Potyomkin, in Garros, Korenevskaya and Lahusen, Intimacy and Terror, p. 289.
29. Ibid., p. 278.
30. Ibid., p. 273.
31. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism (New York, 1999), pp. 94-5.
32. Betty Roland, Caviar for Breakfast (Sydney, 1989), p. 55.
33. Diary of Nina Kosterina, trans. Mirra Ginsburg (New York, 1968), p. 24.
34. Eric Naiman, "Introduction", Platonov, Happy Moscow, pp. xx-xxi.
35. Platonov, Happy Moscow, p. 141.
36. On this, see Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 139-43.
37. Barbara Alpern Engel and Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, A Revolution of their Own. Voices of Women in Soviet History (Boulder, Colo., 1997), p. 108.
38. Korevanova, "My Life", in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow of Revolution, p. 198.
39. Engel and Posadskaya, A Revolution of their Own, pp. 31-32. See also M. Belskaia's memoir of dekulakization, "Arina's Children", in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow of Revolution, p. 233: she writes of the moment when the uprooted family finally resettled in a new location and found the money to buy a tiny hut as follows: "It was a real wooden hut [...] with a little fence, a small garden, and even a clean, wooden outhouse. We were so happy!" (this is the only time the word is used in the memoir).
40. Engel and Posadskaya, A Revolution of their Own, pp. 31-32. See also M. Belskaia's memoir of dekulakization, "Arina's Children", in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow of Revolution, p. 233: she writes of the moment when the uprooted family finally resettled in a new location and found the money to buy a tiny hut as follows: "It was a real wooden hut [...] with a little fence, a small garden, and even a clean, wooden outhouse. We were so happy!" (this is the only time the word is used in the memoir).
41. As Yuri Olesha wrote in his diary (5 May 1930) about the theme of his latest play, Spisok blagodeianii: "The conflict is the double existence of life of one's own I, the kulak essence of that life, and the necessity of building socialism, requiring one to dekulakize one's own individual essence." Iurii Olesha, Kniga proshchaniia (Moscow, 1999), p. 41.
42. See Krylova, "Soviet Modernity in Life and Fiction".
43. Golfo Alexopoulos, "The Ritual Lament", Russian History, Vol. 24, 1-2 (1997).
44. Ephrasinia Vasilevna Kislova (b. 1909; recorded in 1972), from E. N. Razumovskaia, ed., "60 let kolkhoznoi zhizni glazami krest'ian", in Zven'ia: Istoricheskii al'manakh I (Moscoq, 1991), p. 125
45. Korevanova, "My Life, in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow of Revolution, p. 169.
46. Diary of Stepan Filippovich Podlubnyi, in Garros, Korenevskaya and Lahusen, Intimacy and Terror, pp. 306-7.
47. Ibid., p. 320.
48. Ibid., p. 330.
49. Maria Belskaia, "Anna's Children," in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow, p. 226.
50. I b i d.
51. Ibid., p. 229.
52. Ibid., p. 230.
53. Ibid., p. 231.
54. Engel and Posadskaya, Revolution of Their Own, p. 166.
55. Platonov, Happy Moscow, p. 139.
56. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s", Slavic Review, Vol. 55,1 (1996), pp. 83-5.
57. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskoi dokumentatsii Sankt-Peterburga (TsPA IPD), f. 24, op. 2v, d. 2224, 11. 44-8.
58. In his introduction to Aleksandr Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. V. Nabokov (Princeton, 1990), p. 141, cited Andrey Platonov, Happy Moscow, trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. (London, 2001) preface by Robert Chandler, p. ix.
59. In his introduction to Aleksandr Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. V. Nabokov (Princeton, 1990), p. 141, cited Andrey Platonov, Happy Moscow, trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. (London, 2001) preface by Robert Chandler, p. ix.
60. Mark D. Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination. Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910-1925 (Ithaca, NY, 2002).
61. Rabotnitsa, 1936 no. 3, p. 23: Letter to editor.
62. Diary of Andrei Stepanovich Arzhilovsky, in Garros, Korenevskaya and Lahusen, Intimacy and Terror, p. 160. Note that this passage is completely out of keeping with Arzhilovsky's usual factual, analytical, non-emotional style.
63. S.M. Kirov was a Soviet political leader assassinated in December 1934.
64. TSGA IPD, f. 24, op. 2v, d. 1518, 1. 106.
65. Diary of Vladimir Petrovich Stavsky, in Garros, Korenevskaya and Lahusen, Intimacy and Terror, p. 245.
66. Garros, Korenevshaya and Lahusen, Intimacy and Terror, p. 232.
67. Report on the Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. Moscow, March 2-13, 1938 (Moscow, 1938), pp. 777-78.
68. Nicolas Werth, Être communiste en URSS sous Staline (Paris, 1981), p. 14.
69. Harvard Interview Project #91 (v. 7), p. 11. "Social alien" was a term used for people of bourgeois or other undesirable origin.
70. "My Life," in Fitzpatrick and Slezkine, In the Shadow of Revolution, p. 195.
71. Engel and Posadskaya, A Revolution of Their Own, p. 46.
72. Lewis Siegelbaum et al., Stalinism as a Way of Life: a Narrative in Documents (New Haven, 2000), pp. 411-12.
73. Ibid., p. 237.
74. Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia (London, 2000).
75. Lev Subotskii, "Zametki o proze 1947 goda", Novyi mir, 1948 no. 2, p. 118.