1 In particular, this is true of Soviet science fiction, which, if it does portray future Utopias, carefully avoids any account of their development from present historical conditions. McGuire, Patrick L., Red Stars: Political Aspects of Soviet Science Fiction (Ann Arbor, 1985), 27.Google Scholar The shock value of Platonov’s realization of the myth—his description in Chevengur (1929) of a naive attempt to construct a communist society— derives from the official taboo on such a realization.

2 Günther, Hans, “Zheleznaia garmoniia (Gosudarstvo kak total'noe proizvedenie iskusstva),” Voprosy literatury, 1992, no. 1:40.Google Scholar

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9 Beil, Die Wiederkehr des Absoluten, 60. For the influence of German romanticism on Utopian tendencies among the Bolsheviks, see Pethybridge, Roger, The Social Prelude to Stalinism (London, 1974), 43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Günther, “Zheleznaia garmoniia,” 41.

11 “To hell with bronze’s polypoundage.” Maiakovskii, Vladimir, “Vo ves’ golos,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 13 vols. (Moscow, 1955–60), 10:284.Google Scholar A precedent for Maiakovskii’s attitude is that of those iconoclasts during the French Revolution who called for bronze statues to be recast into cannons. Stites, Richard, “Iconoclastic Currents in the Russian Revolution: Destroying and Preserving the Past,” in Gleason, Abbott et al., eds., Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington, 1985), 2.Google Scholar

12 Some embrace this reality with less enthusiasm than others. Yet even the village poet Sergei Esenin makes himself assert, “But all the same I want to see / Poor destitute Russia made of steel.” Esenin, Sergei, “Neuiutnaia zhidkaia lunnost’ …,” Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1961), 3:69.Google Scholar

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14 For an overview of the “metal theme” in early Soviet literature, see Kleinbort, L. M., Ocherki narodnoi literatury (1880-1923 gg.) (Leningrad, 1924), 252–85.Google Scholar

15 For a biography of Gastev, see Johansson, Kurt, Aleksej Gastev: Proletarian Bard of the Machine Age (Stockholm, 1983).Google Scholar

16 On Zamiatin and the proletarian writers, see Carden, Patricia, “Utopia and Anti-Utopia: Aleksei Gastev and Evgeny Zamyatin,” Russian Review 46 (1987): 1–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as Lewis, K. and Weber, H., “Zamiatin’s We, the Proletarian Poets, and Bogdanov’s Red Star,” Russian Literature Triquarterly 12 (1975): 253–78.Google Scholar

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19 Aleksandr Pomorskii, “Pokhorony,” Proletarskaia kul'tura 2 (July 1918): 28. Pomorskii’s audience is described as “welded together by indivisible steel” (27).

20 Besides his literary role, the smith remained the chief visual icon for the worker until the 1930s. Bonnell, Victoria E., “The Iconography of the Worker in Soviet Political Art,” in Siegelbaum, Lewis H. and Suny, Ronald Grigor, eds., Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class and Identity (Ithaca, 1994), 341–60.Google Scholar

21 Nechaev, E. E., Shkulev, F. S., and Gmyrev, A. M., U istokov russkoi proletarskoi poezii (Moscow, 1965), 209, 228.Google Scholar

22 Belyi, Andrei, Peterburg (Moscow, 1981), 307.Google Scholar References to the Bronze Horseman as a metallic revolutionary figure can be found among the proletarian poets. Surkov, A. A., ed., Proletarskie poety pervykh let sovetskoi epokhi (Leningrad, 1959), 196, 314.Google Scholar

23 Johansson, Aleksej Gastev, 82. For examples of the use of religious imagery among proletarian writers, a number of which incorporate striking images of metallization, see Steinberg, Mark D., “Workers on the Cross: Religious Imagination in the Writings of Russian Workers, 1910-1924,” Russian Review 53 (April 1994): 221–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Still, Gastev seems to share (at least unconsciously) the goal of such symbolists as Viacheslav Ivanov, who called for the creation of new myths to unite intelligentsia and people. A precedent for Gastev’s syndicalism can also be found in Ivanov’s sobornost'. Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer, “Introduction,” Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary (Cambridge, 1994) 3–6.Google Scholar On Gastev and symbolism, see Johansson, Aleksej Gastev, 43. On the relationship between the symbolists and proletarian writing in general, see Os'makov, Nikolai, Russkaia proletarskaia poeziia 1890-1917 (Moscow, 1968), 135, 214-15.Google Scholar

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26 Aseev dubs Gastev the “Ovid of miners and metalworkers”—perhaps in recognition of the prominence of the theme of metamorphosis in his work. Aseev, N. N., “Gastev,” Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1963), 1:202.Google Scholar On Gastev’s attitude toward the futurists, see “O tendentsiakh proletarskoi kul'tury,” Proletarskaia kul'tura, 9-10 (June-July 1919): 45.

27 Gastev, Poeziia rabochego udara, 15, 14, 17.

28 Ibid., 18; “Vse, chto nuzhno znat’ khalturshchiku dlia pokaza geroev,” Na literaturnom postu 30 (October 1931): 32-33.

29 Gastev, Poeziia rabochego udara, 18.

30 Z. S. Papernyi, “Proletarskaia poeziia pervykh let sovetskoi epokhi,” in Surkov, ed., Proletarskie poety, 12. Similarly, Os'makov praises Gastev as “one of the most talented of the proletarian poets.” Russkaia proletarskaia poeziia, 154.

31 Serafimovich, Aleksandr, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1959), 6:461–628 Google Scholar, quotations found on 621 and 620.

32 Ibid., 584. Compare Gastev: “The crowd steps in a new march; its feet have caught the iron tempo.” Poeziia rabochego udara, 120.

33 Ibid., 592, 621.

34 Later the same year, Gastev was exiled to Vologda province, where he satisfied his pedagogical urge by seeking work as a private tutor. Johansson, Aleksej Gastev, 12.

35 Aleksei Gastev, “V poiskakh,” Zhizn’ dlia vsekh, 1913, no. 1.

36 The contradiction between what Johansson calls Gastev’s “clear-cut individuality“ (Aleksej Gastev, 68) and his collectivist posture is complicated by the fact that the labor management theory promoted in his work itself leaves no place for the engineer-hero, just as it leaves no place for Gastev’s preoccupation with manual labor over labor-saving mechanization. See Harro Segeberg, Literarische Technik-Bilder: Studien zum Verhaltnis von Technik- und Literalurgeschichte im 19. und friihen 20. Jahrhundert (Tubingen, 1987), 198-99. As for the author of this theory, Taylor himself appears as somewhat of a misanthropic engineer-hero, especially in this description of his ideal of the metalworker: “One of the first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles an ox than any other type.” Quoted in Pethybridge, Social Prelude to Stalinism, 38.

37 Verne, Jules, The Complete Twelve Thousand Leagues under the Sea (Bloomington, 1991), 186–87.Google Scholar

38 Mally, Lynn, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (Berkeley, 1990), 93–95.Google Scholar

39 Źiźek, Slavoj, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (London, 1991), 156–60.Google ScholarPubMed See also Tumarkin, Nina, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 1983), 7.Google Scholar

40 Stalin, I. V., “O Lenine,” Sochineniia (Moscow, 1947), 6:46.Google Scholar One can imagine what sort of stuff in particular could be in the mind of this advocate of “metallization of the whole country.” “K itogam rabot XIV konferentsii RKP(b),” Sochineniia, 7:130.

41 Chernyshevskii, N. G., Chto Mat'? Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1939), 11:207.Google Scholar

42 In comparison, the metal imagery of the Nazis largely omits the element of suffering, while their Soviet opponents in World War II tend to portray themselves as aggrieved defenders, even when on the offensive.

43 Aleksei Gastev, “Iz dnevnika tramvaishchika,” Zhizn’ dlia vsekh, 1910, no. 10.

44 Gastev, Poeziia rabochego udara, 245.

45 That enslavement to capital was in fact much less a worry to Gastev than the question of industrial reorganization per se is suggested by Bolshevik reaction to his ideas on the financing of Russia’s economic restructuring. Johansson, Aleksej Gastev, 60.

46 Gastev, Aleksei, Kak nado rabotat': Prakticheskoe wedenie v nauku organizatsii truda (Moscow, 1966), 138.Google Scholar

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48 On the depiction of suffering in sacred, redemptive terms in workers’ literature, see Steinberg, “Workers on the Cross,” 220-27.

49 Lotman, I. M., and Uspenskii, B. A., “Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture (to the End of the Eighteenth Century),” in Nakhimovsky, Alexander D. and Nakhimovsky, Alice Stone, eds., The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History (Ithaca, 1985), 30–66.Google Scholar

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52 While the reality of what Lenin called the “declassing” of the proletariat has been debated (see Koenker, Diane, “Urbanization and Deurbanization in the Russian Revolution and Civil War,” Journal of Modern History 57 [1985]: 424–50Google Scholar), what is important here is the broadly shared perception of disintegration, and the impetus it gave to artists and writers to reinvent “the mythological revolutionary proletarian,” as Lewis Siegelbaum and Ronald Suny put it. Siegelbaum and Suny, “Class Backwards? In Search of the Soviet Working Class,” in Siegelbaum and Suny, eds., Making Workers Soviet, 14-16.

53 On contemporary criticism of Gastev’s Taylorization project, see Bailes, Kendall, “Aleksei Gastev and the Soviet Controversy over Taylorism,” Soviet Studies 24, no. 3 (1977): 386–91.Google Scholar

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55 Beil, Die Wiederkehr des Absoluten, 54.

56 Mass burial is a common motif in Gastev’s tales of collective martyrdom. Poeziia rabochego udara, 121-23, 139.

57 Ibid., 195.

58 Other proletarians occasionally used mythological themes: for example, K. Odintsov, who tells in his “lazychnitsa” of how “fiery Dazh'-bog / Laughed and blazed with the glitter of metal.” Gor'kii, M. et al., eds., Sbornik proletarskikh pisatelei (Petrograd, 1917), 78.Google Scholar Still, they avoid any mythologizing of the worker.

59 Needham, Joseph, “Iron and Steel Technology in East and Southeast Asia,” in Wertime, Theodore A. and Muhly, James D., eds., The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven, 1980), 516.Google Scholar

60 On this topic, see Masing-Delic, Irene, Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth-Century Literature (Stanford, 1992).Google Scholar On myths of death and transfiguration in socialist realism, see Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1985), 181–82.Google Scholar

61 V. D. Aleksandrovskii, “My,” in Surkov, ed., Proletarskie poety, 95.

62 M. P. Gerasimov, “Kresta,” in Gor'kii et al., Sbornik proletarskikh pisatelei, 3.

63 In her study of medieval culture, Marcia A. Morris notes that fire “is the destructive force which Russian apocalyptic thinkers dwell on in greatest depth, and the idea that present suffering will win the believer recognition as one of the chosen is also central to apocalyptic thought.” Morris, , Saints and Revolutionaries: The Ascetic Hero in Russian Literature (Albany, 1993), 95.Google Scholar On fire/light/sun/heart symbolism in proletarian writing, see Os'makov, Russkaia proletarskaia poeziia, 167.

64 Eliade, Forgerons et alchimistes, 157.

65 Aleksandr Bogdanov, “O tendentsiiakh proletarskoi kul'tury (otvet Gastevu),“ Proletarskaia kul'tura, 9-10 (June-July 1919): 51-52. Also see Sochor, Zenovia A., Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy (Ithaca, 1988), 137–38.Google Scholar

66 Carden also sees the long-unresolved problem of how to make labor meaningful as a major concern of Gastev’s, for which his “vision of the immaculate factory with its perfect precision and cooperation” offers a solution. Garden, “Utopia and Anti-Utopia,” 10.

67 Quoted in Pethybridge, Social Prelude to Stalinism, 147.

68 Boym, Svetlana, “Paradoxes of Unified Culture: From Stalin’s Fairy Tale to Molotov’s Lacquer Box,” South Atlantic Quarterly 94, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 824.Google Scholar Boym points out that this song, with a few textual modifications, was also adopted by the Nazis, who had heard it sung in translation by German communists (825).

69 German, P., “Vse vyshe (Aviatsionnyi marsh),” in Endrzhievskii, V., comp., Kryl'ia sovetov: Literaturno-estradnyi sbornik (Moscow, 1939), 6.Google Scholar

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74 Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York, 1989), 164.Google Scholar

75 Komsomol’skaia Pravda (29 December 1989). An analogous literary example of post-Stalinist subversion of 1930s aviation symbolism is Vasilii Aksenov’s surrealistic parable “Stal'naia ptitsa” (The steel bird, 1965).