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Soviet Historical Novelists Look at America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
Extract
Prior to the initiation of the recent cultural exchange program, the Soviet citizen derived the bulk of his information about the United States from scattered reports in the Soviet press, travelogues, literary works in which Americans appear, and translations of American works of fiction. For approximately twenty years the most important literary source was a volume entitled One-Storied America by Il'ja Il'f and Evgenij Petrov, an account of a tour of the United States in 1936. However, most Soviet materials gave a distorted and incomplete view of America, a view further safeguarded and reinforced by careful selection of works suitable for translation.
If the information Soviet citizens had on contemporary America was scanty, that dealing with Russian-American contacts in the more distant past was even scantier. Prior to 1934, Soviet novelists were generally discouraged from turning to historical subjects, and those who did write historical fiction preferred to deal first with the most spectacular and most important moments in Russian history, all of which had been treated by pre-Soviet writers, but which now had to be interpreted from the Soviet point of view.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1960
References
1 Il'f, Il'ja and Petrov, Evgenij, Odnoetazhnaja Amerika (Moscow, 1936)Google Scholar . Translated into English as The Little Golden America (New York, 1937).
2 For a recent listing see Brown, G. W. and Brown, D. B., A Guide to Soviet RussianTranslations of American Literature (New York, 1954)Google Scholar .
3 Tolstoj, A. N., Pjotr Pervyj (Moscow, 1929–45); V Google Scholar. Kostyljov, Ivan Grozny] (Moscow, 1944-47) ; Jazvickij, V., Ivan III, Gosudar’ vseja Rusi (Moscow, 1951-55)Google Scholar.
4 B. Suchkov, “Sovremennyj istoricheskij roman,” Literatura i iskusstvo, December 18, 1943.
5 D.Romanenko's Erofej Khabarov (Moscow, 1946) treats Khabarov's trip to Kamchatka in 1649; Druzhinin's, V. N. Pokhody Atlasova (Moscow, 1941)Google Scholar deals with the conquest and settlement of Kamchatka in 1696; Junga's, E. Kolumby Russkie (Moscow, 1941)Google Scholar has as its subject the discovery of the North American mainland in 1741 by Chirikov and Bering; The most important novel dealing with the Amur region is by N. Zadornov K Tikhomu Okeanu (Moscow, 1950) which deals with the 1848 expedition of Captain Nevelskoj.
6 Okun', S. B., Rossijsko-amerikanskaja kompanija (Moscow, 1939)Google Scholar; available in English translation, The Russian American Company (Cambridge, 1951) .
7 Markov, Sergej, Jukonskij Voron (Moscow, 1946)Google Scholar . The novel was actually written in 1940-41, but had to wait some five years for publication. Sergej Markov has also written a number of other works dealing with Russian travelers, discoverers and explorers including Ljudi velikoj celi: N. M. Przheval'skij, N. N. Miklukho-Maklaj (Moscow, 1944), and Podvig Semjona Dezhneva (Moscow, 1948) .
8 Kratt, Ivan, Ostrov Baranova (Leningrad, 1945)Google Scholar; Kolonija Ross (Leningrad, 1950). Both novels appeared in a posthumous edition of selected works under the general title of Velikij Okean (The Great Ocean) in Izbrannoe (Leningrad, 1951) , pp. 215-730.
9 Grigor'ev, Vladimir, Grigorij Shelikhov (Moscow, 1952)Google Scholar.
10 Sergej Markov tells how it happened that the Siberian merchant G. V. Judin sold his library to the Library of Congress because the tsarist government would not purchase it. “Contemporary America has the libraries of Bancroft and Judin, the Bancroft and Judin collections of old documents on the history of Russian America, and finally the Russian archives of New Archangel, Ross, Kodiak, Unalaska, and the Pribylov Islands. These books and documents comprise a genuine scholarly treasure. The life of Siberia, Alaska and California are reflected in them as in a mirror…. Many archival materials have not yet been worked over and have not been published either in America or here in the Soviet Union.” Markov, Sergej, “Letopis’ Atjaski” in Jukonskij Voron (Moscow, 1946), pp. 321-22.Google Scholar The works of Hubert Bancroft are indispensable for any study of Alaska and California, especially his History of Alaska (San Francisco, 1890), and The History of thePacific States, Vol. XIV, “California 1801-1824” (San Francisco, 1885) which is of special importance for the period of Kraft's novels. Vladimir Grigor'ev quotes Bancroft's favorable comment on Shelikhov in his novel Grigorij Shelikhov, p. 588.
11 Nikolaj Rezanov had fallen in love with a Spanish girl in California and planned to marry her, but because of the differences of religion, he had to have the permission of the officials in St. Petersburg, of the Spanish court, and the Roman Catholic Church. It was while he was hurrying home to accomplish this mission that he died. The story is told by Gertrude Atherton in her novel Rezanov (New York, 1906) . A later historical work on the subject is Hector Chevigny, The Lost Empire: The Life and Adventures ofNicolai Rezanov (New York, 1937) .
12 See my articles “Changing Patterns of a Revolutionary Hero,” Slavonic and EastEuropean Review (June, 1954), pp. 367-84; “A Novel in Flux: V. Kostylev's Ivan Grozny],“American Slavic and East European Review (October, 1955), pp. 359-70; “Ivan Bolotnikov in Soviet Historical Fiction,” Slavic and East European Journal (Fall, 1959), pp. 231-41.
13 Quite understandably, Markov also waxes enthusiastic about Russian-American ties in the past, tells of the joint telegraph company being developed by the two countries, quotes the New York Herald report on the sale of Alaska in which the likelihood of a political, commercial and military alliance between the USA and Russia is foreseen. We also have the report printed in the Alaska Herald, a paper published in San Francisco, just after the sale of Alaska to the United States: “America and Siberia are two young powers which have been turned back to back. The time has now come that they are beginning to face each other in order to understand each other and to work together for the common good.” Markov, “Letopis’ Aljaski” in Jukonskij Voron, pp. 306-14.
14 See Chevigny, Hector, Lord of Alaska: Baranov and the Russian Adventure (New York, 1942), pp. 80–90 Google Scholar.
15 Ibid., pp. 71, 184,211.
16 Ibid., p. 244.
17 Ibid., p. 227.
18 Ostrov Baranova, pp. 62-88; Kolonija Ross, pp. 178-86.
19 Simpson of the Hudson Bay Co. visited the Russian Colonies in 1842, and claimed that even then there was barely one-tenth the number of Aleuts as had been there when the Russians had captured the area. Baranov and Shelikhov were guilty of extreme cruelty with regard to the native population. Okun, op. cit., pp. 193-94, 255. The recent edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia also mentions the cruelty of the Russians with regard to the native population, and notes that this had the approval of the Russian-American Company Bol'shaja Sovetskaja Enciklopedija, 2nd ed., Vol. 37 (Moscow, 1955), p. 227.
20 The Russian-American Company tolerated this seizure of native women from the very beginning on the grounds that contacts between Russian men and Aleutian women were indispensable, both in order to discover any injurious designs that the natives might harbor, and to establish firmer relations with the native population, since children born of these unions would think of themselves as Russians and not Aleuts. See Okun, op. cit., p. 214. Baranov encouraged his hunters to take mates “for domestic economy and comforts,” and he himself followed suit by taking in an Eskimo girl to “care for him and his house,” and later replaced her with the daughter of a Kenaitze chieftain, whom he named Anna Grigorevna, and who later bore him two children, a son Antipatr, and a daughter Irina. At that time Baranov's wife in Russia was still alive. Lord of Alaska, pp. 50, 54, 86, 112, 140-41, 188.
21 Lord of Alaska, pp. 137, 223, 225, 228, 251.
22 Because of the nature of Soviet copyright laws and the rules governing payment to authors, it is entirely possible that there may not have been any intent on the part of the author or the editors to delude the public, and to hide the fact that revisions had been made. If 25% or more of a work is revised or altered, the writer is paid at the rates for a new book. If revisions total less than 25% of the text publishing houses are reluctant to indicate that the work has been revised for fear that then they would be forced to pay the higher rates, or so I was given to understand by a number of writers in my discussions with them in September of 1957. This, of course, in no way whatsoever alters the fact that certain changes had been made, and that these have an important bearing on the novel itself. For information on the rules governing revisions see Serebrovskij, V. I., Voprosy Sovetskogo Avtorskogo Prava (Moscow, 1956), pp. 142–43Google Scholar.
23 The first edition of Kratt's Ostrov Baranova will be designated by the symbol 45N, to be followed by the page number. The 1950 edition of Kolonija Ross is to be designated as 50N, and the edition of selected works Izbrannoe by 51N.
24 Okun, op. cit., p. 24.
25 See also Okun, op. cit., pp. 174-76.
26 A. Rudakov, Chairman of the Irkutsk City Soviet et al., the writers K. Sedykh, G. Markov, I. Lugovskij, A. Okhon and Ivan Molchanov-Sibirskij, “Uvekovechif pamjat' Grigorija Shelekhova,” Literaturnaja gazeta, Oct. 24, 1950.
27 The practice of scalping was confined to a limited area in the Eastern U.S. and the lower St. Lawrence region. It was not practiced on the Pacific coast, in the Canadian Northwest or in the arctic regions. Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. 20 (Chicago, 1956), p. 46 Google Scholar.
28 See my article “A Novel in Flux.” ASEER (Oct., 1955), pp. 363, 367.
29 In a footnote, Grigor'ev states that Britjukov's accusations had never been confirmed by documents, and the testimony of Shelikhov's contemporaries, but he does not contribute any real refutation of the accusations.
30 Authoritative Soviet sources in no way corroborate Grigor'ev's statements to the effect that Stadukhin ever visited the island of Sakhalin. See Lupach, V.S., ed.( Russkie moreplavateli (Moscow, 1953), p. 556 Google Scholar.
31 Grogor'ev, Vladimir, Grigorij Shelikhov (Moscow, 1956)Google Scholar. The 1956 edition was published in 75,000 copies as compared with 30,000 copies for the 1952 edition. Most of the pages correspond exactly with those in the 1952 edition, but some changes in the length of individual lines indicate that the new edition has also been printed from new plates. It is interesting that when Il'ja Sel'vinskij's drama Rycar’ Ioann (Moscow, 1939) was reprinted in 1956, the portrayal of Vasilij Shujskij which had been criticized as gross, vulgar, and inaccurate was altered only slightly. See Sel'vinskij, Il'ja,Izbrannye proizvedenijav dvukh tomakh, Tom vtoroj, Tragedii (Moscow, 1956)Google Scholar.