The House of Government

by Slezkine, Yuri

  After the first wave of housing requests had subsided, the most sought-after perquisites of high office were country houses (dachas) and stays at CEC “rest homes” and sanatoria. In 1920, Housing Authority agents began traveling around the country in search of appropriate gentry estates. In 1922, Enukidze created a special Department of Country Property. Later that year Prince Bariatinsky’s estate in Maryino, Kursk Province, became Lenin Rest Home No. 1. The home included an 1816 palace “in the Italian style” for 150 guests; a twenty-seven-acre park; a large pond on a river with one motor boat and several rowboats; newly created courts for tennis, croquet, and skittles; gymnastics equipment; and a small library.21

  By 1924, the Department of Country Property was overseeing a network of dachas outside Moscow and ten “rest homes” in the North Caucasus, the Caucasian and Crimean Rivieras, and central Russia (including several close to Moscow, used for weekend getaways). In 1925, at the suggestion of Rykov (Lenin’s successor as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars), a special commission headed by Enukidze divided this rapidly growing “country property” into Group 1, for one hundred individuals and their families, and Group 2, for other eligible officials. All homes in both groups were further subdivided into three categories: general health spas, “balneological” spas (mostly around Kislovodsk and Sochi), and rest homes, “where medical treatment is provided on an individual basis.” In Maryino, which belonged to the first category, guests were supposed to get up at 7:45, do calisthenics until breakfast at 9:00, receive various water and electrical treatments until lunch at 1:00, take a nap from 2:00 to 3:30, have tea at 4:30, receive more treatments or play games until dinner at 8:00; and take a compulsory constitutional until lights-out at 11:00. In 1927–28, most violations of the regimen “were of an innocent, inoffensive nature: missing afternoon naps, smoking in the rooms, and being out past bedtime.”22

  Vladimir Adoratsky

  One of Lenin’s close associates and, after Lenin’s death, one of the deputy directors of the Lenin Institute, Vladimir Adoratsky, spent the summer of 1927 at a balneological spa in Essentuki. As he wrote to his daughter, who was in a different sanatorium, he was enjoying all his treatments: the “saline-alkaline baths with stray, tiny bubbles popping up in different places on your body”; the drinking water from Spring No. 4 and Spring No. 20; the “galvanization of the spine” (“tingles most delightfully as tiny ripples go down your body”); the electrical shower (“also a very pleasant invisible downpour”); the carbon dioxide baths (“bubbles all over your body” and “gas right up your nose”); the “circular shower” (“tiny little torrents raining down on you”); and the Charcot shower (“a ferocious pleasure—your body turns as red as our red flag”). He also enjoyed the billiards, the chess, the dominoes, the improvised concerts, the pleasant company, the attentions of his doctor, and the daily 5:00–7:00 p.m. musical performances, especially after the conductor, Brauer, from the Stanislavsky Studio had “simply transformed the orchestra.” But most of all, he enjoyed the food:

  Breakfast at half past eight: a chunk of butter about two inches long and as thick as your thumb, a dollop of caviar of approximately the same size, a couple of eggs, coffee, and as much cucumber and tomato salad as you want. The second breakfast at 11 a.m.: four fried eggs and a glass of milk or tea. A three-course lunch at 2 p.m. Tea with a bun at 5 p.m. (The buns are fresh!!) (I don’t drink the tea.) Dinner at half past seven: a good-sized piece of schnitzel (or chicken) with cucumbers and tomatoes and a dessert (kompot, apple mousse with whipped cream, or simply fruit—apricots, pears, etc.) All four meals come with a cup of buttermilk.23

  ■ ■ ■

  Having won the war, taken over the state, established stable administrative hierarchies, and rewarded themselves with a system of exclusive benefits and a good-size piece of schnitzel (or chicken), the Bolsheviks began to reflect on their past. Most memoirs of anticipation and fulfillment were written in the 1920s. Everyone was writing histories—to preserve the past, legitimize the present, and align personal experience with sacred time. Some did it spontaneously, as an affirmation of faith; some did it professionally, on behalf of special institutions; some did it as leaders of people and makers of events; some did it as followers of leaders and witnesses to events; some—such as the members of the Society of Old Bolsheviks—did it as a matter of institutional requirement; and most Soviets did it, in the form of official “autobiographies,” as part of their regular interactions with the state—from college admissions and job applications to requests for apartments, services, and balneological treatments. Everything had to corroborate and constitute the story of fulfilled prophecy. Some parts of the story were more important than others.

  Rituals that celebrate connections to sacred origins are acts of remembrance and reenactment. The most elaborate early Bolshevik eucharists were mass stagings of the storming of the Winter Palace. One of the main theorists of such celebrations—and of “people’s theater” in general—was Platon Kerzhentsev. The point, he wrote in 1918, was not to “perform for the popular audience” but to “help that audience perform itself.” The people were to perform by themselves, without professional or priestly mediation, and they were to perform (represent and celebrate) themselves, as both form and subject. Kerzhentsev took as his model the festivals of the French Revolution, especially the Fête de la Fédération of July 14, 1790, which, according to Kerzhentsev, centered on the swearing of the oath of allegiance to the constitution and the performance of musical and choral pieces. “The people expressed their joy by shouting and singing.” But because the French Revolution had been a bourgeois revolution, such revolutionary festivals could not become permanent:

  In today’s France, nothing is left of those majestic revolutionary festivals. The famous “14 July” is a pathetic, gaudy fairground for the benefit of wine sellers and merry-go-round operators…. The same signs of decay and degradation are evident in the historic festival of another bourgeois revolution, the anniversary of the liberation of the United States from the yoke of absolutist England. In today’s America, “the Fourth of July” has turned into a boring official celebration, at the center of which are fireworks that each year send hundreds of children and grown-ups to an early grave. When, two years ago, this dangerous entertainment was banned, the festival quickly wilted and lost all its color—so superficial and artificial had it become.24

  Under socialism, the line separating sacred events from their ritual reenactment would be erased. Commemorations would dissolve “into those free expressions of joy that only become possible at a time of complete liberation from the heavy shackles of economic oppression.”25

  One of the earliest pieces of popular theater and the most consistent realization of the flood metaphor associated with the real day was Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe, first performed on the first anniversary of the October Revolution (“sets by Malevich, directed by Mayakovsky and Meyerhold, acted by free actors”). After the deluge that destroys the old world, “seven pairs of the Clean” (“an Abyssinian Negus, Indian Raja, Turkish Pasha, Russian merchant, Chinaman, well-fed Persian, fat Frenchman, Australian and his wife, priest, German officer, Italian officer, American, and student”) and “seven pairs of the Unclean” (a chimney sweep, lamplighter, driver, seamstress, miner, carpenter, day laborer, servant, cobbler, blacksmith, baker, washerwoman, and two Eskimos—one a fisherman, the other a hunter) escape in an ark. The Clean form an autocracy and later a bourgeois provisional government before being thrown overboard in the course of a proletarian revolution. Once the Unclean are left on their own, the plot changes from the flood to exodus. The Unclean suffer great privations but vow to withstand storms, heat, and hunger as they travel to the promised land. Suddenly they see Jesus, played by Mayakovsky. He walks on water and offers “a new Sermon on the Mount”:

  Come hither—

  Those who have calmly plunged their knives

  into enemy flesh

  and walked away with a song.


  Come, those who have not forgiven!

  You’ll be the first to enter

  my heavenly kingdom.

  The Unclean journey to hell, which looks like a gaudy fairground compared with the oppression they have suffered on earth; to heaven, which they find populated by pompous windbags (including Rousseau and Tolstoy); and finally back to earth, which, in the absence of the Clean, is overflowing with milk, honey, and “Comrade things,” eager to be possessed in a never-ending orgy of unalienated labor.

  Day Laborer

  I’ll take Saw. I’m young and ready.

  Saw

  Take me!

  Seamstress

  And I’ll take Needle.

  Blacksmith

  I’m raring to go—give me Hammer!

  Hammer

  Take me! Caress me!

  The blacksmith leads the way.26

  Mystery-Bouffe, “The Clean.” Sketch by Mayakovsky

  Mystery-Bouffe, “The Unclean.” Sketch by Mayakovsky

  Karl Lander, in his capacity as head of Moscow Agitprop, did not approve. Mystery-Bouffe, he wrote, “is some type of primitive, unconscious, unreal communism.” Voronsky, from his position as supervisor of Soviet literature, did not approve, either. “Mayakovsky’s socialism, which sees things as the only value and rejects everything ‘spiritual,’ is not our socialism.” Mayakovsky’s hero is huge and belligerent, but he is still too pale and abstract, “perhaps because Babylon has sucked too much of the blood and life’s juices out of him.” There were two major problems with Mystery-Bouffe, besides the lack of spirituality and life’s juices. First, the flood metaphor had outlived its usefulness because the real day had been followed by the Civil War, and the Civil War required a more substantial (more mythic) representation of Babylon. And second, theatrical reenactments were too ephemeral to serve as history, let alone myth.27

  The farther one moves from the sacred origins, the greater the ascendancy of narratives over participatory rituals (and their “people’s theater” incarnations). As last suppers turn into regularly scheduled eucharists, written accounts of foundational events congeal into gospels (sutras, hadiths) that define the moral and aesthetic foundations of the founder’s inheritance. The failure of the prophecy creates a world of expectation shaped by canonical stories of what once was and might yet be. The Bolsheviks took over the state before the past took over the present, and they made the writing of scripture a matter of state policy. History as Literature of Fact was too pedestrian to serve that purpose; Literature as Myth became a crucial part of “socialist construction.” The New City’s legitimacy depended on an army of fiction writers, with Voronsky in the lead. The winner’s reward was immortality.

  ■ ■ ■

  The main task of Bolshevik gospel-writers was to mythologize the Civil War. Most attempts to do so relied on the contrast between Babylon and the raging elements—winds, storms, blizzards, and inchoate human masses.

  Babylon came in two varieties. One was the traditional biblical kind—drunk on the wine of her adulteries and overflowing with cinnamon and spice, myrrh and frankincense. In Aleksandr Malyshkin’s corrupt city of Dair (The Fall of Dair, 1921), “yawning mouths pressed down on tender, oozing fruit flesh with hot palates; parched mouths slurped up delicate, fiery wine, shimmering jewel-like against the light; jaws, convulsed with lust, ingested, with loud smacking noises, all that was soft, fatty, or spiced.” In Vsevolod Ivanov’s Armored Train 1469 (1921), Babylon’s doomed bodies “oozed sweat, and hands became glued to walls and benches.”28

  The second, more “realistic” Beast was the provincial town of the intelligentsia tradition—a swamp where time stands still and dreams come to die. Yuri Libedinsky’s A Week (1922) begins with a “heavy afternoon nap”:

  In every window of every house there is a geranium in bloom, its flowers perched on top like so many pink and blue flies. Oh, how many of these gray wooden boxes there are, stretching for street after street, and how cramped and suffocating it is inside each one of them! There is an icon shining dimly in the front corner and velvet-covered albums resting on small tables covered with lace doilies. In the dirty kitchens, there are cockroaches running up and down the walls and flies buzzing despondently against the windowpane.

  The life led by the people living in these stifling houses resembles a gray September day, when a drizzling rain patters monotonously against the window, and through the glass covered with raindrops, you can just make out the gray fence and the red calf plodding through the mud. Every day, early in the morning, the woman of the house milks the cow before setting off with her basket to the market, and then, after lunch, she washes the greasy dishes in the kitchen.29

  Andrei Platonov’s “town of Gradov” (Gorod Gradov [Townstown], 1926) consisted of both huts and “more respectable dwellings,” with “iron roofs, outhouses in the backyard, and flowerbeds in front. Some even had small gardens with apple and cherry trees. The cherries were used to make liqueur, and the apples were pickled…. On summer evenings, the town would fill with the sound of floating church bells and smoke from all the samovars. The townfolk existed without haste and did not worry about the so-called better life.”30

  The difference between a pastoral and the netherworld is mostly a matter of literary genre and police vigilance. Boris Pilnyak’s town of Ordynin (The Naked Year, 1922) smells of mold and rotten pork; Isaak Babel’s Jewish shtetl stinks of rotten herring and “sour feces”; and Voronsky’s swamp swarms “with myriads of midges, soft, plump tadpoles, water spiders, red beetles, and frogs.” Most of the residents are weeds planted by the devil. “Look at him,” says Voronsky’s Valentin: “Observe his excitement as he turns over and digs through the lumps of fat and lard! His eyes are oily; his lower lip hangs loose; his filthy, foul-smelling mouth fills with saliva.” Babylon II has merged with Babylon I. “Seen from a hill,” says Libedinsky’s narrator, “all these little houses look so quiet and peaceful.” But the local Chekist (secret police official) knows: “somewhere among them, our enemies are hiding.”31

  There are three main ways of representing the Civil War between the old world and the new: the apocalypse, the crucifixion, and the exodus.

  The first is the story of mass slaughter: the storming of Babylon, the battle of Armageddon, or some combination of the two. The central theme—as in the original model—is merciless retribution through total violence against feminized evil: “Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself.”32 Such is the fate of Malyshkin’s Dair:

  Fire burst forth from the terrifying carts as they dashed and scampered about, cutting wide swaths with the invisible blades of their machine guns. Streams of bullets issued from the carts and raked through the cloud of men on horseback—slicing, pruning, cutting them down in full gallop, and mowing down whole columns; the unburdened horses, shrieking and twisting their heads, rushed wildly past and disappeared into the murk. Broken bones disintegrated; mouths, still bearing the imprint of a mistress’ kiss from the night before, gaped darkly; and the streets, colored fountains, artistic elegance, and solemn hymns of dominion collapsed and were trampled into a bloody pulp.33

  Every remnant of Babylon must be trampled into a bloody pulp. In Vsevolod Ivanov’s Colored Winds (1921), the Red partisans attack a Siberian village defended by the Beast’s branded servants: “The officer is at the head; the officer always stands at the head…. He gets an axe in the mouth. There are teeth on the axe. The officer lies on the ground. If you are going to kill, then kill. If you are going to burn, then burn. Kill everyone, burn everything. There is a slaughtered woman in every yard. A slaughtered woman in front of every gate. No men left? Then kill the women. The red flesh of their wombs lies exposed.”34

  Riding or walking at the head of the holy host is Jesus the Avenger. He is always at the head, leading his followers: “the eleven” (Boris Lavrenev), “the twelve” (Aleksandr Blok), “the nineteen” (Aleksandr Fadeev), or the countless armies of those who have inherited the
earth. “With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.” In Lavrenev’s comic answer to the Book of Revelation, Commissar Evsiukov wears a bright red leather jacket:

  If one adds that Evsiukov is short, squat, and shaped like a perfect oval, then, in his bright red jacket and pants, he ends up looking like a dyed Easter egg.

  And, on Evsiukov’s back, the straps of his combat gear cross to form the letter “X,” so when he turns to face you, you are expecting to see the letter “B.”

  Христос Воскресе! [Khristos voskrese!] Christ is risen!

  But no, Evsiukov does not believe in Christ or Easter.

  He believes in the Soviets, the “Internationale,” the Cheka, and the heavy blue-steel revolver he holds clenched in his hard, knotty fist.35

  All commissars are both saviors and avengers. Pilniak’s “leather people” hold their executive committee meetings in a monastery. “And it’s a good thing, too, that they wear leather jackets; you can’t dampen them with the soda pop of psychology.” Firmness comes at a price, especially for “the sluggish, unruly Russian people.” Pilniak’s head commissar, Arkhip Arkhipov, spends long nights thinking. “Once, daybreak found him bent over a sheet of paper, his brow pale, eyebrows knitted, and beard slightly disheveled, but the air around him clean and pure (not the way it usually was at the end of the night), for Arkhipov did not smoke. And when the comrades arrived and Arkhipov handed them his sheet of paper, the comrades read, among other words, the fearless phrase: ‘to be shot.’” As Jesus says in Mayakovsky’s new Sermon on the Mount, “come hither—those who have calmly plunged their knives into enemy flesh and walked away with a song.” To join the army of light, one had to learn what Babel’s narrator in Red Cavalry (1924) calls “the simplest of skills—the ability to kill a man.”36