The same only partially successful struggle to shed the old language in order to present new concerns can be seen in many ofthe literary works of the 'Thaw' that took place in the period 1953-6. A novel such as Vladimir Dudintsev's Not By Bread Alone (1956) resembles in many respects the old narrative of unmasking evildoers who carry a party card. The noble inventor Lopatkin is thwarted at every turn by officials such as Drozdov. Drozdov is not a spy who should be shot or sent to the camps, but he is an enemy of the people who should be purged.
The historic originality of Not by Bread Alone and other literary productions of the 'Thaw' does not come from its muck-raking narrative but rather from its mode ofbeing. The novel is a personal statement by an individual, Vladimir Dudintsev, who wrote it to express his views on the country's situation. For the first time in Soviet history, the party-state's monopoly on shaping the authoritative narrative was challenged. This aspect was magnified by the enormous and unprecedented public discussion generated by the book. Again for the first time in Soviet history, an autonomous public opinion used public channels to hear and deliberate, pro and con, on vital issues.
The narrative of Not by Bread Alone also affirmed an autonomous space for 'small, narrow, personal life'. Lopatkin has an affair with Drozdov's estranged wife who has left Drozdov partly because of his inability to have any sort of personal life. Indeed, Lopatkin, the counter-Drozdov, has trouble accepting his own need and right to have a personal life. The real climax of the novel is not when Lopatkin's invention is officially introduced but when he decides to ask Nadia to marry him - or rather, when he decides he can ask her to marry him.
Some aspects of Dudintsev's novel are more evident today than they could have been to contemporary observers. In a brief episode towards the end of the novel, Dudintsev touches on another great turning-point in Soviet history: the return of Gulag inmates to Soviet society. In hindsight we can also see that Lopatkin is a proto-dissident. Lopatkin survives on the margin of society, outside state service, relying on the support of fellow eccentrics, odd jobs, material aid from sympathisers and finally on occasional patronage from people within the system. Given the new possibility of independent material existence and armed with a ferocious self-righteousness, Lopatkin sets out to reform the system.
The last lines of the novel evoke the path metaphor. Although Lopatkin's machine was already made and handed over to the factories, he again suddenly saw before him a path that lost itself in the distance, a path that most likely had no end. This path awaited him, stretched in front of him, luring him on with its mysterious windings and with its stern responsibility.'[372] Lopatkin's personally chosen and mysterious road without an end subverts the narrative of society's triumphal journey to communism.
Yet the triumphal official version of the path metaphor still had some life in it. One of the most exuberant, optimistic and inclusive speeches in Soviet history is Nikita Khrushchev's comments on the new party programme at the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961. Here Khrushchev updated the path metaphor in an allusion to the successful exploits in space that appeared to validate Soviet claims to leadership: 'The Programmes of the Party [1903,1919, 1961] may be compared to a three-stage rocket. The first stage wrested our country away from the capitalist world, the second propelled it to socialism, and the third is to place it in the orbit of communism. It is a wonderful rocket, comrades! (Stormy applause).'
The new programme ratified a fundamental shift in the conception of class leadership within the narrative. The official formula that summarised this shift was the replacement of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' by the 'state of the whole people'. The proletarian dictatorship was defined as not only a time of repression but also of class leadership:
The workers' and peasants' alliance needed the dictatorship ofthe proletariat to combat the exploiting classes, to transform peasant farming along socialist lines and to re-educate the peasantry, and to build socialism . . . The working class leads the peasantry and the other labouring sections of society, its allies and brothers-in-arms, and helps them to take the socialist path of their own free will.
In essence, this shift had been announced already in the early 1930s, but Khrushchev now drew the full implications without obsessing about the enemy within. 'The transition to communism [in contrast to the transition from capitalism to socialism] proceeds in the absence of any exploiting classes, when all members of society - workers, peasants, intellectuals - have a vested interest in the victory of communism, and work for it consciously.' The transformative function of class leadership was now transferred to the more or less automatic results of economic growth.[373]
On the basis of this combination of class collaboration and institutional tinkering, Khrushchev promised the realisation of full communism within twenty years. But this less dramatic and more inclusive version of the path metaphor ran into trouble when the expected 'advantages of socialism' failed to materialise. During the post-Khrushchev period, the journey to communism seemed stalled. The Brezhnev period is now known to history as the era of stagnation, but an even more sardonic label can be found in a song by Vladimir Vysotskii. Vysotskii was a figure scarcely conceivable in earlier phases of Soviet society - a hugely popular actor and singer who was also famous for his contribution to the genre of magnitizdat, the guitar poetry that circulated unofficially on tape cassettes.
One of his more hilarious songs is entitled 'Morning Gymnastics'. Sung up-tempo with manic cheerfulness, the song urges us to preserve our health by doing push-ups every morning until we drop.[374] The climactic final verse is given special emphasis:
We don't fear any bad news.
Our answer is - to run on the spot!
Even beginners derive benefits.
Isn't it great! - among the runners, no one is in first place and no one is backward.
Running on the spot reconciles everybody!
'Morning Gymnastics' was not an underground song - it can be found on a record sold in Soviet stores around 1980. To read the final verse as a satirical comment on Soviet society may be over-interpreting a highly entertaining comic song (although this kind of over-interpretation was also a feature of this complex and ambiguous period). Nevertheless, whether Vysotskii meant it this way or not, his image of'running on the spot' is a highly appropriate symbol of the class leadership narrative in its last days. A sense of frantic activity without real movement, a loss of the earlier dynamic arising from a vanguard seeking to inspire backward strata, a 'hear-no-evil' refusal to acknowledge problems - many Soviet citizens, even the most loyal, saw their society increasingly in these terms. Khrushchev had called for conflict-free progress towards communism, and what was the result? 'Running on the spot reconciles everybody!'
When the perestroika era began in 1985, there was a widespread feeling that running on the spot could now finally be transformed into real movement forward. Instead, the perestroika era was marked by an ever-intensifying feeling that no one really knew any more where society should go. This de-enchantment of the narrative of the path to socialism took place in two interlocking processes. The first process was the development of reform thinking away from the question 'how do we realise the advantages of socialism?' and towards the question 'how do we avoid the disadvantages of socialism?' The other process was a painful rethinking of Soviet history. How and when did we lose the true way and what must we do to get back on track?
372
V Dudintsev,
373
374
The text to 'Morning Gymnastics'