A version of this article was read at the AAASS meeting in Honolulu in November 1988. I wish to thank Emil Draitser, Yury Druzhnikov, and Heinz Fenkl for their constructive comments.

1. Voinovich, Vladimir, Zhizn’ i neobychainye prikliucheniia soldata Ivana Chonkina: Roman-anekdot v piati chastiakh (Paris: YMCA, 1976)Google Scholar. Excerpts of the novel have recently been published in the Soviet Union (Ogonek, no. 50, 1988, 26-30), and the entire novel has recently been published by Knizhnaia palata (1990).

Richard Lourie's English translation is titled The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (New York: Bantam Books, 1979). In quoting English passages I have taken the liberty of correcting some infelicities of the Lourie translations of Voinovich, and I have used Library of Congress transliteration for proper names.

2. Voinovich, Vladimir, Pretendent na prestol: novye prikliucheniia soldata Ivana Chonkina (Paris: YMCA, 1979)Google Scholar. Richard Lourie's translation is: Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981).

3. Kasack, Wolfgang, “Vladimir Voinovich and His Undesirable Satires,” in Fiction and Drama in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, ed. Birnbaum, Henryk and Eekman, Thomas (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1980), 264.Google Scholar

4. See Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton, The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), 229–230 Google Scholar.

5. See, among the many other works on this subject, Whaley, Barton, Codeword BARBAROSSA (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Medvedev, Roy, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 446ff.Google Scholar; Nekrich, A. M., June 22, 1941 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986), 164ff.Google Scholar; Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza 1941-45, 6 vols. (Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel'stvo Ministerstva Oborony Soiuza SSR, 1960-1965) 2:18; Read, Anthony and Fisher, David, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact 1939-1941 (New York: Norton, 1988)Google Scholar; Dmitrii Volkogonov, “Nakanune voiny,” Pravda, 20 June 1988, 3. Stalin's inability to deal with the threat posed by Hitler is psychoanalyzed in my The Mind of Stalin (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1988), 76-92.

6. Before writing Chonkin, Voinovieh himself had written a satirical story titled “Circle of Friends” which, in part, dealt with 22 June 1941. See Putëm vzaimnoi perepiski (Paris: YMCA, 1979), 165-190.

Of the fifty*one anecdotes on the theme of Stalin given in the most comprehensive collection of Soviet political humor, only two deal (somewhat marginally) with Stalin's failure to prepare for the Nazi onslaught. See Shturman, Dora and Tiktin, Sergei, Sovetskii Soiuz v zerkale politicheskogo anekdota (Jerusalem: Express, 1987), 216, 218Google Scholar.

7. See Freud's essay Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans, under direction of James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth, 1953-1965) 3:105. For an informative and entertaining treatment of psychoanalytic theories of laughter, see Holland, Norman N., Laughing: A Psychology of Humor (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 47–60 Google Scholar. For an application of the psychoanalytic theory of satire to Russian examples (including Voinovieh), see Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel, “The Boys of Ibansk: A Freudian Look at Some Recent Russian Satire,” Psychoanalytic Review 72 (1985): 639–656 Google Scholar.

8. The facts are somewhat more complicated than this simplified account would suggest. Chonkin was only one of the reasons why Voinovieh was persecuted by the authorities when he still resided in the Soviet Union. But it was an important reason. See Voinovich's, Antisovetskii Sovetskii Soiuz (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1985), 7 Google Scholar.

9. Freud, , Standard Edition 8:90 Google Scholar.

10. See Igor’ Zolotusskii and Anatolii Lanshchikov, “Dialog nedeli,” Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 3 (5225), 18 January 1989, 2.

11. Voinovich's image of Stalin in a dress may have a subtext from Bolshevik political culture. A (possibly apocryphal) story used to circulate about Stalin dressing in a woman's mantle at a concert in Petersburg in March of 1913. Supposedly he was trying to avoid being arrested by agents of the tsarist police, but they recognized him and arrested him anyway. For Trotskii's version of the story, see Trotskii, Lev, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence (New York: Stein and Day, 1967), 160 Google Scholar.

Another possible subtext is an agitprop caricature of Kerensky escaping from Red Guards in a nurse's dress. The caricature found its way into Zoshchenko's story “Kerensky.” See Mikhail Zoshchenko, Rasskazy ipovesti: 1923-1926 (Leningrad: Sovetskii Pisatel', 1959), 464-465 (I am grateful to an anonymous reader for bringing this reference to my attention).

The idea of cross-dressing appears also in Voinovich's story “Circle of Friends.” There Stalin cuts pictures of people out of Ogonek magazine and pastes the men's heads to women's bodies and vice-versa. See Putem vzaimnoi perepiski, 168.

12. On rumors of Stalin's infidelities, see Montgomery Hyde, H., Stalin: The History of a Dictator (New York: Da Capo, 1971), 260, 289Google Scholar. For recent evidence of Stalin's liaison with Rosa Kaganovich (sister of Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich), see Kahan, Stuart, The Wolf of the Kremlin (New York: Morrow, 1987), 169–171.Google Scholar

13. Mikhail Kaganovich committed suicide after being accused of deliberately ordering the construction of Soviet airplane facilities too close to the German border, so that the Germans might capture them more easily. See Kahan, , Wolf of the Kremlin, 223–230 Google Scholar.

14. See Freud, , Standard Edition 15:154 Google Scholar.

15. For general psychoanalytic treatments of the topic of castration anxiety, see LaPlanche, Jean and Pontalis, J.-B., The Language of Psycho-Analysis (New York: Norton, 1973), 56–60 Google Scholar; Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel, Signs of the Flesh (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1985), 307–340 Google Scholar.

16. Freud, Standard Edition 8:236.

17. For a fascinating glossary of popular terms for Stalin, see Kozlovskii, Vladimir, “I. V. Stalin v russkoi zhargonnoi leksike,” SSSR: vnutrennie protivorechiia 3 (1982): 104–111 Google Scholar.

18. Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 127 Google Scholar.

19. See Zhukov, G. K., The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov (New York: Delacorte, 1971), 202 Google Scholar; Hough, Jerry, “The Historical Legacy in Soviet Weapons Development,” in Soviet Decisionmaking for National Security, ed. Valenta, J. and Potter, W. C. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984), 90, 111 (n. 25)Google Scholar.

20. Example provided from memory by University of California, Davis, graduate student Valery Jossan. It should be noted that the third line of this quatrain of P. D. German's poem originally read “Nam razum dal stal'nye ruki-kryl'ia.” See Ashukin, N. S. and Ashukina, M. G., Krylatye slova (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1987), 215 Google Scholar. The substitution for razum of Stalin was apparently quite common, however. I found two native speakers who supplied the word Stalin, and two who gave razum.

21. These selections are quoted from Pesnia o Staline: Izbrannye stikhi Sovetskikh poetov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Detskoi Litratury, 1950), 10, 26, 23. The frontispiece of this collection shows Generalissimo Stalin in his office. There is a model airplane on his desk.

22. Zinov'ev, Aleksandr, “Nashei iunosti polet,” Kontinent 35 (1983): 176–206 Google Scholar.

23. Robert Cullen, “Letter from Moscow,” The New Yorker, 17 October 1988, 108.

24. Erickson, John, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany, Volume I (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 118 Google Scholar.

25. As quoted in Popovskii, Mark, Tretii lishnii: on, ona i Sovetskii rezhim (London: Overseas Publications, 1985), 85 Google Scholar.

26. Freud, Standard Edition 15:155; 11:125.

27. Otto Rank, Psychoanalytische Beiträge zur Mythenforschung (Leipzig: Internationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1922), 37-38 (compare Freud, Standard Edition 5:583). Goldstein, Laurence, The Flying Machine and Modern Literature (London: Macmillan, 1986), 34, 100, 119, 123, 140, 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hart, Clive, Images of Flight (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 119–192 Google Scholar; 211-243. Dean S. Worth, “A Sexual Motif in the Igor Tale,” Russian Linguistics 11 (1987): 209-216.

28. Vladimir Kozlovskii, Argo russkoi gomoseksual'noi subkul'ture: Materialy k izucheniiu (Benson, Vt.: Chalidze, 1986), 42. Drummond, D. A. and Perkins, G., Dictionary of Russian Obscenities (Oakland: Scythian, 1987), 16, 42, 87Google Scholar. Alex E., Alexander, “The Two Ivans’ Sexual Underpinnings,” SEEJ 25 (1981), 32 Google Scholar. The couplet is from a chastushka; see Vladimir Kozlovskii, Novaia Nepodtsenzurnaia chastushka (New York: Russica, 1982), 30.

29. Thanks to an anonymous reader for this information.

30. The Russian original is “Ne nashim ‘ishakam’ s messerami tiagat'sia” (164). “Donkeys” is Lourie's rendition of “ishakam.” But “ishak” is also the acronym for the Soviet fighter plane 1-16, that is, ‘I-shestnadtsat'.” I am grateful to an anonymous reader for pointing out this untranslatable pun.

31. I am grateful to Rick Leitzman for pointing out this particular example to me in my Seminar on Current Russian Prose in May of 1986.

32. See Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 65 vols. (Moscow: OGIZ, 1939) 43:468-469; Sovetskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, 1980), 955; Scott, John, Duel for Europe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942), 223–225 Google Scholar.

33. See Kozlovskii, “I. V. Stalin v russkoi zhargonnoi leksike” and Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Max Hayward (New York: Atheneum, 1976), 200

34. Carey, Claude, Les proverbes erotiques russes (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), 76 Google Scholar.

35. See Avtorkhanov, Abdurakhman, Zagadka smerti Stalina (Frankfurt: Possev, 1979), 308–309 Google Scholar.

36. See Dunlop, John B., “Vladimir Voinovich's Pretender to the Throne ,” in Russian Literature and American Critics, ed. Brostrom, Kenneth (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1984), 30 Google Scholar.

37. Dal', Vladimir, Poslovitsy russkogo naroda, 2 vols. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literature, 1984) 1:275 Google Scholar. Compare also “Kuritsa ne ptitsa, a baba ne chelovek;” “Kobyla ne loshad', baba ne chelovek” (ibid.).

38. Kozlovskii, “Stalin v russkoi zhargonnoi leksike,” 106.

39. See Hosking, Geoffrey A., “Vladimir Voinovich: Chonkin and After,” in The Third Wave: Russian Literature in Emigration, ed. Matich, Ol'ga and Heim, Michael (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984), 149.Google Scholar

40. Lowe, David, Russian Writing since 1953: A Critical Survey (New York: Ungar, 1987), 72–73.Google Scholar

41. Loseff, Lev, On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature (Munich: Sagner, 1984)Google Scholar.

42. Hosking argues that “Chonkin is deliberately composed on the border line between fantasy and reality, in a world where the fantastic and grotesque have become real, and ordinary human beings like Chonkin belong almost to the fairy tale.” See “Vladimir Voinovich,” 150. Lewis puts it this way: “Stalin is never a reality [in Chonkin]. He is the ultimate comic absurdity, always a myth, a myth which can only be exposed in the most grotesque form possible: the Gogolian dream.” See Lewis, Barry E., “Vladimir Voinovich's Anecdotal Satire: The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin ,” World Literature Today 52 (1978): 545 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.