Tucker "Aginast the grain"

She talks about the definition of parody using Morson and Bakhtin. 1-4

Talks about the definitions of intertext and satire and how they are used by authors like Gogol and Dostoevsky and others. 1-19

Olesha's Babichev in his pince nez parodies Rodchnko and Osip Brik's art. 116

Kavelerov and Ivan parody the haves and have nots in the novel. 119

Babichev's sausage to be painted parodies the artist patron relationship in the west and the Soviet state-writer relationship. 120

Perpetual clash between verbal images and objects occur in Envy. Andrei is a lover of things (fat) and is good with objects and in life as opposed to Kavelerov who is not good at anything and "things hat him." 120

Worthless challenge to authority by Kavelerov as parody of literary conventions. 122

Ivan's ophelia challenges the soviet or avant garde's constructivist authority by echoing constructivist art like the worthlessness of Tatlin's monument. 126 All of the inventions parody revolt and even against Ivan. 127

Ivan spreads rumors like Christ parodying him. 127 he is even arrested and questioned similarly. 128

Ryan-Hayes "Contemp Russian Satire"

Satire is understood as a manner of writing, a mode rather than a genre. 1

Zoschenko innovations with skaz broke new ground in satiric characterization and pointed out the contradictions and the excesses of the NEP period. 2

One of the problems with determining Satire in the contemporary period is that the Russian and Soviet critics often conflate satire and humor and a distinction is seldom made. 3

Another problem is that the same critics tend to see it in a low status. The problem is that satire tends, unlike most other literature forms finds it objects ouside of art - society, politics, moral life of the culture. 3

Western critics often de-emphasize the didactic while the Russian used it as a standard by which to measure it. 3

One of the most prevalent ways in which satire is used is the paradying of genre conventions.4

It is also important to understand that parody and satire are not the same thing although they are also often conflated. 4

Parody is best also seen as a mode, not a genre. Parody aids satire often supporting the mockery and criticism, but doesn't have to - it is not subordinate to satire. 4

An important difference bewteeen satire and parody is that satire aims at exterior targets - politics, social mores, cultural institutions. 4

Parody refers to another artistic construct. 4

Satire aims at the exposure of or the improvement of a faulty set of parameters in life.

Parody is an aesthetic phenomenon. 5

Parody must be immatative and refer to another specific author or work and put the words or thtoughts to a new purpose. 5

According to the formalists Shklovsky and Tynanov Parody is the laying bare of the conventions of the cliches and the conventions and serves as a great evolutionary force in literature. 5

Bakhtin wrote that the parody involved two voices where the second is trying to discredit the first. It must be paired. 6

Gary Saul Morson wrote that it doesn't have to involve humor. 7

The belief that parody need be mockery, derision, or ridicule has been discredited and it need not even criticise the original by some critics. The need to modernize or reply to something is perhaps even stemming from admiration. 7 Others continue that true parody should have some sort of criticism, but sympathy or even love takes the sting out of it for the reader. 7

Satire doesn't question the moral ad ethical norms against which the target is measured. Instead, genre norms and individual texts are recast through parody so as to satirize social, political or moral aspects of contemporary culture. 8

In order to be effective, the reader must be able to decode the reference and understand with whom he is to agree. 8

Satiric tone can be gentle and mocking (Horatian) or caustic and harsh (Juvenalian).9

Livingstone "time in chevengur"

In Chevengur time has stopped. It is the end of time as the Marxist teleological end to all of humanity has reached its climax, so the inhabitants think, in Chevengur.803

She looks into Platonov's own beliefs on what time means in the philosophical sense.

In the novel most of the questions are either poorly answered by people not capable of answering well or just not answered. Zakhar is trying to figure out the answer to a number of different problems and one of these is time. 807-8

Kopyenkin too 809

Druzhbya bednyaki group is Platonov's satirization of the excesses of communists. They want the meetings to be everyday or twice a day so the important events don't float away without being given proper attention.

The chevengurians are the absolute satire where they want to do nothing in the quest for communism except stop time in the moment when they have produced commraderie. 810

They are satirized in the fact that they take the stopping of time before the eternal communism and literally stay up all night waiting for the dawn of the new day when communism will be reached. 815

Chepurnyi has a sadness for the life that he lived during time before the end of time. He is sad for all the memories that were before. 815

Borenstein "Men without Women"

Bits of introduction to the lack of women and who are the few women in Chevengur, Envy. 2-3

Fellow Travelors - popoutchiki - those that accepted the soviet union, but could not produce works that it demanded. Olesha and Babel fit this. 5 They had other problems that had to do with sexulaity and identity that were not shared by their characters in this period, though much of the confussion they felt in the period is what they felt themselves. 5

The period of War communism last 3 years longer in Russian than it did in Europe after WWi. Before the civil war there was a heady revolution of social mores that tended to promiscuity. War Communism took care of it however. 6

After the war there was another sexual revolution in the period of NEP. 7

Attempts to transform reallife according to a prepackaged plan is somehting the writers of this period did, incuding Platonov. 9

Socialist Struggle against nature as it relates to Chevengur. 16

Comradship in the period and Olesha's Kavelerov's evny of Makarov's ability to blend and build ties. K disowns any need for the group, but feels compelled by it. 31

Comradship was something that came out of being in the trech together with one's fellow man. Once the war was over and War Communism was replaced with NEP many of the men that fought on the front lines and felt that the WC was the best manifestation of the era felt betrayed by the loosening of form and the rejection of what they had experienced. 34

The period of the 1920s was hard for people. They had to work for the future knowing that communism was a long way off and that the old structures were obsolite. There was little but eachother to cling to. 37

Olesha and Platonov on the question of building a society of men without women. they and babel do it best. 39 Each of these worlds that rests on a lack of women and work is doomed to fail. Nature cannot be replaced with culture. 41

The period of NEP in the 20s was highlighted by an androgenousization of the population. Women were engaged in work that once was just for men. It is highlighted by the sheer lack of women as revolutionaries in Chevengur and by the way the doctor treats the NKVD rep that was a woman in Sobachii Serdste. 45

The marriage of Makaraov and his Vera in Envy makes fun of the new forms in the NEP period. They plan to marry years from now. 46

Rosa Luxumberg as the ideal Socialist woman dead and distant. 48

Chevengur and the prostitutes and men traveling together. 50

The literary reaction to the civil war introduced many narratives that dealt with the bonds and the horrors of comradship since the war set comrad against one another. 61

The war's culture of violence was brought back to the civilian world in NEP where rape where introduced was given in a bad light and was also this way in real world too. 68 Reference to men's love in Chevengur's of dead RLux.

Fears of homosexuality in Chevengur and need for women, but only if they are comrades. 69

private property comes into play in Chev only after the women arrive. 70

In Olesha's envy the issues of father and son that had plagued all time before were fixed as father and son were now working for the same future. The father and son alliance is not a blood tie, but one where men choose each other as father and son. 126

Kavelerov has a hard time getting along with the younger generation and has not found a father in the old gerneration. He is outside all of the new structures being forged and fails like Ivan because of this. 126

The revolution disrupts the transition from father to son in Olesha and Platonov. 133

Chevengur's Dvanov's lost father and returns to grave. 133

The soviet ideology stated that the bourgeoise family with the father at the head must be erraticated in the new world. Kavelerov has problems stemming from his lack of father and need to find a new one, yet never wanting to engage in relations that will make him a father. Even with women they must not result in fatherhood. 135-6

Babichev wants to free the family and fathers from blood ties to children and prefers to give birth to kitchens and sausages and take care of adult children that he chooses. 161

Idoltry of the feminine, yet the world is androgenous. 163

He seems to say that Olesha's world in envy is not one based on greed and and he doesn't touch the satirical elements of the story. The story is bases on male comraderie and who is a part of it and who is not. Even when women show up they are used not to pit the men against eachother as in a traditional tale, but they serve to bring the men together. Kovalerov is an exception and Ivan doesn' t get invited to the party either, but they are brought together in their attempts to play at the same games as the others. 172

Love triangles 176-183

Chevengur is haunted by the two things that it tried to live without: desire and femininity. 191

Utopia as satire. 192

He seems to build a fratriarchy with a complete disdain for sexuality in the first part of the decade, then comes back and makes his peace with it in the second and into the future in the 1930s. 193

Kopyonkin strives for both being a knight and for the love of Rlux. it is the exact opposite thing that the chevengurians live for. They have a disdain for love and don't do anything in their communist community. 203

Chevengur is not the "History of one town" that SS wrote. It has irony in Zakhar Pavlovich in the beginning and with the Chevengurians at the end and it is not the same utopian type novel that he wrote earlier in his career, though there are utopian images. The characters are too real and simple to gain the distance between reader and character that you usually get in satire. 226

The characters are too uneducated and foolish to really evaluate what they do. They just took the theory and made it real without asking if they should have made it in the first place.226

Chevingur in 2 pages: 227-228

Kopyonkin's "greed of friendship" for Dvanov is the tie that binds them together - comraderie. 230

When the men live in poverty they have comraderie and seek out each other. When the miscellaneus come and force them to get things and make their lives more stable then they have no need of eachother. 240 It cannot be called greed to not want to live in poverty, but it is interesting that the accumulation of physical things makes them less socialized.

He says that the appropriation of the community by the micellaneus women and the way of life that the men are dragged into is the same counter-revolutionary path that the leaders of NEP have been dragged into with their concessions. 241

Sinyavsky "Soviet civilization"

He looks at the revoution and as the manifestation of elemental forces. 28

The soviet union once created is based on an idea and according to them the most logical and best idea in the world - a utopia. Utopias in Russia are looked down upon since they suppose that it exists somewhere else and is something in the future. In the soviet union, they are already living the utopia and are the heirs of all history. 28

He states that Lenin put the NEP into effect in order to appease the peasants and the farm workers. When it was put into action the period of War communism that preceded it came to be a bit of a utopia. it was viewed originally that all they had to do was to have the peasants take the grain away from the aristocrats and then the peasants would feed everyone and it would make it to the factories and then they would have communist production and distribution. This was not a realistic view of how it worked out and thus a utopia. 61

In order to postpone the war with the peasants and to make War communism work it had to be ammended and the program of NEP had to be added. 62

Description of 1922: NEP is in full swing, the height of soviet democracy and freedom. Mass executions without trial, investigations and tribunals are giving way to soviet diplomacy and procefure. In this period is also soviet legalized terror. 63

NEP was Lenin's pragmatism, not a utopia. If anything it might be the anti-utopia since it was done with calculated means. 64

Lenin worked hard and everything came through him, but it was an unweildy mess. In order to fix the bureacratic-ness he needed to create new bureaucratic processes and get rid of those that were't working. 71

Summing up 72 Socialism was already in place during NEP as the limited freedoms that the consumer and seller had were regimented by the gov and tolerated it only for a short period of time. 72

The intellectuals were some of the first to be called the enemies of the state and they felt that they did not have the freedom to work as they wanted in the new system. 73

Sinyavsky uses annecdotes and literature, primarily Blok, Dostoevsky and Mayakovsky, to discuss what he saw and belived about the Soviet Union. It is an excellent look from inside, but is neither a history textbook, nor a treatise on the Soviet Union. It is more of a cultural look at the history through the eyes of an author that rambles and digresses as he explains. Insightful.

Master and Margarita 105 a product of Stalin's problems, but not confined to them. Woland plays with and tolerates the Master in the same way that Stalin tolerated Bulgakov. Had S known about M and M Bulgakov surely would have been shot. The black ball is an allegory of the concentration of villains that congregate with Stalin. 105-108

Heart of a dog as the new man. 147-151

Avins " Border Crossings"

Master and Margarita as a link to the west. Woland is from the Germany as Faust's mephistophiles. 186

Jeruselum is foreign to moscow as if the eventst that take place there could not take place in Moscow. 187

There is not much in this book that refers to NEP or satire. It works mostly with the East and West question and has a very short bit on Bulgakov.

Chapple "Soviet Satire of the 1920s"

Wants to categorize the factors that lead to Soviet satire in the 1920s and how it develped from the revolution to the introduction of Socialist Realism. v

Influence on the 1920s came from Gogol and SShchedrin. 2

Different groups of satirists - War communism, NEP and first 5 year plan. 2

The period of NEP especially did not focus in on utopias and WE is a notable exception. The felling is that the reception of WE discouraged some writers and the chaos of the revolution and the time was enough and better fodder than looking ahead.

Fellow Travelor and Emigres satirists and defined 3

The archetypes of satire were largely already in existance from the past satire. 6 There were some dos and don'ts despite the relative freedom after years of censorship from the tsar. he makes a list of the apporoprite vices in socity to satyrize. they tended to be generalized to a type rather than specificly at a person. 6

Satire from names was common as in Bulgakov. 7 physicality too. Very Gogolian

Moral standards and truth seekers are often involved. 8

Living conditions were commonly used 9

Soviet terms started to be used as early as War com. 10

Satire from Gogol's time was interested in the social question.12

The groundwork that started during War communism is what flourished during NEP13

Longer works started to replace the shorter ones. 14

Writers started concerning themselves with the contmeporry world and less with the past in NEP. 15Focus on the contemp showed that people were coming to grips with the lack of utopia that was promised and they saw it for what it was. 15

Soviet satire could not exist as the decade wore on because their must be an antagonist and there was no class antagonism then it was defunt. 16

Bulgakov as fellwo travelor and Dog's heart on the revolution. 23

Bitterness in satire started to replace the humor. 24

The revolution's effect on the people and society in satire. 25

Difference between the proregime satirists and the fellow travelors and emegres. 28 The FT claimed that the people didn't know what was happening and they rarely saw a difference. 29

They said that things did not change and that the people would not change either. 30

Connections between Gogol and Bulgakov in Chichikov. 32

Poverty remained as a symbol that not much had changed. 33

FT on War communism and deprivation 34 Proregime satirists were harder on the Whites and the old power structures. 34

Mayakovsky was a big one for satirizing the Whites and the Entente nations. 40

Satire on Communism tended to include stereotypes, not people. 40

The iron communist even started to be a caricature in a leather jacket-olesha. 42 but the zamyatin machine is also common. 43

Conclusion - Satire of the revolution was crude and Bulgakov and Zamyatin are best examples of good satire. 50

Satirists mocked those that emigrated for following their cozy exploitative ways to paris. 51

After 1924-25 the most written about theme switched from the revolution to everyday life. 59

The housing shortage was common. 60, 63 Zoschenko wrote much on this.

Bulgakov wrote from the otherside of this by exposing the rich that held on to their apts. 61

Zoikina Kvartira Bulgakov 63

Lack of money, inflation and Zoschenko. 65

Poor quality of goods. 66

Theft and Hoologanism 67

Zoschenko and bathhouses 68

Renaming of streets for Revolutionary names and soviet vocab 70

Marriage houses and Zoschenko 71

The theater as mixing of classes 71

Red Tape 71, 72,73

Employment and Red tape 74

Purges and self criticism as a way to save yourself 75

Embezzelers 76

Bureacrat 77

NEP bureaucrat 78, and Zoikina 79

NEP 82 Zosch, Mayako 83,84

Nepman and speculation 85

Philistinism as an extention of gogol or as always having been there, but simply not given enough room in War communism. He prospered in NEP because the conditions were ripe.

Englishmen and the english 87 imperialism 88, 89

capitalists 90

Toward the French 91-94

America and capitalist 95-99

Mayakovsky and America 99

Other nations 100

Religion 104

New religion of Science and Mayakov 107-111

Hooliganism as a result of nep 112

Drinking and the illiterate and the antisemite 114,115

satirizing the other literary camps 116

the proletarian poem 120

Satire of censorship 123

of Gorky 126

Overly ornate and incomprehensible theater for the masses. Meyerhold, the futurist were ridiculed by Ilf and petrov. Mayakov was spared, but not futurist. 128

Into the 1930s. 129

Government involvement in the arts and the first 5 year plan are the end of Satire 129

Union of Soviet Writers gets rid of FT. 130

Master and M 133, 134, 139-142 and religion

Ilf and P and the west and America 135, 137

Klanderud "Ilf and Petrov's poetic world"

K looks at the Soviet world at this time as a question of involvement or noninvolvement in the new society as a sort of "with us or against us"

He leads a discussion on the use of language -particularly the bureaucratic language and Soviet Newspeak - as leading to man's dehumanization and to transformation to a non-thinking automoton. I and P use this language to emasculate and parody.

the language doesn't reflect the reality as much as it replaces it. Words replace deeds once people give it undue authority. 444

I and P lay bare the cliches and the official language. Compared to Zoschenko, whose characters use the new terms incorrectly and with humor. I and P show the new forms for all their ostantatiousness, but emptyness. they apply a sort of "defamiliarization" to the words that make up the new Soviety reality. They show how the language became a part of people's lives, yet didn't make them any more meaningful and were lost on emigres. 445

I and P were pointing out the distortions in a system that they belived in at least on the idea level. 446

They took what could have been found in any Pravda and turned it upside down. They change the conent of the structure and parody the meaning in such phrases.

447

They recognize that their own sphere, writitng, has also been regimented and they play on this with Bender's "Ceremonial Set."449

They are most critical of those on the inside that cannot think for themselves - bureaucrats and other writers that used the lexical crutches of the new words. The characters in their novels end up speaking abou the revolution because of the words they are forced to use and cannot even comment on what is taking place around them - The train line.

Bender is a noninvolved person in the new society. He takes advantage of those that should be contributing to the new socity, but end up hindering it because they are slaves to the new forms. He does a good deed for socity by taking people to task for not thinking for themselves.451

3 stages of Bender's skill:

1. Recognition of the cliches that his new aquaintance represensts.

2. paraody and mimicry of the discourse and enthusiasm.

3. exploitation of the beliefs into B's own gain. 451

Bender is not meant as a positive hero, but he is the only one with the energy and initiative to make a difference as a new Soviet Man. He can be seen as rogue or as a warning against those that would succumb to linguistic dehumanization. I and P don't attack the system in this way, but only the distortions and the ideals when the system is run by lazy folk content to let the system rust. 453

Fitzpatrick "World of Ostap Bender"

Bender is the Soviet version of a confidence man. he is a sort of trickster of folklore origin subverting social comventions and authority. he makes people realize that the accepted pattern has no necissity. Everything that orders society is subjective and arbitrary. It also may have no other purpose, but to produce the thrill of freedom. 535

The classic Russian literary example is Gogol's Klestyakov from Revizor.

Shklovsky said that Bender came out of the picaresque trickster literature in Europe and America like Fielding's Tom Jones, Twian's Huck Finn. 537

B has the ability to switch personalities, get himself out of trouble using the materials at hand, win the confidence of the people looking for a return to the past. His great skill is in speaking Bolshevik with fluency in a way that threatens others because they cannot. He uses this skill to seem legitimate to gullible people.

Bender and the novels by I and P were not necessarily approved by the powers that be or the intelligentsia because they are seemingly light-minded and lack a moral stance. 537

The conman in society is a good social commentator. He must have a good hold on the bureaucratic organizations in order to inspire trust in the people he fools. B is able to manipulate the Soviet bureacracy. He knows how to get the good that are only available to the upper crust of society. He knows how good travel from the top to the bottom and how to get them and use Blat. 538

The fictional stories are influenced by the real life versions that existed and vice versa.

Revolutios are if nothing else a time when people need to reinvent themselves in a time of crisis. 539

Real frauds took many forms including: posing as an official with the Soviet language that intimidated people, Forging documents with letter-head.540 Or posing as an olf Bolshevik hero of the revolution or civil war - and other claims of official status. 542

Sometimes it involved the invention of entire government institutions with fancy acronyms, stamps, seals and paper. Inpersonating the NKVD/OGPU.

People claimed skills in order to get jobs in a field and learned on the job. Often conmen arrived in distant provincial towns, committed the act and got out of town. it was easier to get away with it in the country, but there was less money in it.

Like with Bender the connection of conmen and ethicity especially jewishness was common.

There was both overt and covert anti-semitism at the time. the official line was never so forward, but its actions towards the jews showed the opionion. Despite the dates of publication there is no conincidence of the rise in antisemitism and the novels of Bender - of Turkish origin, but read as a Jew. 546

The frauds were based on three circumstances: the need for documents in the new Soviet world, the credulousness of officials in the face of any document, the ease in which documents could be made. 540

Even honest people had to resort to this sort of thing because all their documents were destroyed in the war or to hide the fact that their family had been dekulakized.541

It was common for conment to pose as relatives of officials and important people than the actual people. 541

Bender had to pose as a journalist as did other real life conmen.

The official response to the novels is that they should not be published and there was a ban until 1956. they were seen as disrespctful toward soviet life. Bender was seen as "bold, resourceful, witty...and the people he meets are stupid." 555

Zholkovsky "' Electrician" or the complex theatrical mechanism"

Z believes that the writer should show both the general and the personal. Without the general and the historic lead up to what is in his psyche, one cannot hope to understand the personal. 47

Z uses the conflicts that arise from and support public humiliation in his works.

Also, the play within a play where the events on the stage echo the events that take place off stage. Sometimes the events on stage have nothing to do with the fighting off stage.

Light/Dark oppositions show up in several of his plays. In the Electrician they play against the opera by glinka and the tale by Pushkin.

Z had a problem with the immorality of the public, but was unappologetic in his own vices. he said "A satirist must be a morally pure man. (61)"

He wrote for an 'anti-cultural' simplicity and was able to do this by being stronger in the ownership over his own art. This ties in with the public humilatons and the conflicts he works up in his own characters. 57

Z also uses a "pride aping humility move" 60.