Why Is Envy Considered A Great Martyr?

Were it a testimony to the rigors and cruelness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, besides perhaps Anne Franke`s diary and the testimony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done. The prisoners of the labor camp, as in Shukhov?s predicament, were required to behave as Soviets or face severe punishment. In an almost satirical tone Buinovsky exclaims to the squadron that ?You?re not behaving like Soviet People,? and went on saying, ?You?re not behaving like communist.? (28) This type of internal monologue clearly persuades a tone of aggravation and sarcasm directly associated to the oppression?s of communism.

Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler, dives into what it would be like to be a political prisoner in Russia during Stalin’s time in power. The story is divided into four parts: First Hearing, Second Hearing, Third Hearing, and Grammatical Fiction. The subject of the book is given a look at by examining the story of Nicholas Rubashov, an older revolutionary and member of the Old Army, who is imprisoned and accused of crimes that he didn’t commit. To begin the First Hearing, Rubashov is arrested and put in solitary.

The dominance of Soviet Russia’s government and societal norms are key factors that control the fate of those who live in the area. Soviet Russia, well known for their communistic society, is deemed by Americans as a place with “horrors” and can be seen by outsiders as amusing (70). Katya’s lover, an oblivious American, inquires about these horrors as a way of seeking “some entertainment—for an easy amusing, and preferably sexy story about the exotic world to which his lover belonged” (70). Unfamiliar with the Russian communist lifestyle, Katya’s lover is merely a spectator to the customs and culture of Katya’s homeland, which seem oppressive in nature to him. On the other spectrum, Katya is startled and unaccustomed to the perception others might have of the society she comes from. She reminisces on miniscule happenings such as the lack of freedom of

The official definition of socialist realism is included in the First All-Union Congress statutes. They state, "Socialist realism is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism."2 This seemingly simple definition is riddled with conundrums, dooming socialist realism from the start. It demands authors be truthful, yet writing about the harsh realities of life within the Soviet Union was grounds for execution. "It was impossible to reconcile the teleological requirement with realistic presentation. The world could either be depicted as it was or as it should be according to theory, but the two are obviously not the same."3 Some authors attempted to straddle the line, writing novels which seemed to support socialist ideals, but upon a second glance were bitterly satirical; Yuri Olyesha's Envy, published in 1927, was one such novel. The literary establishment of the time praised the novel, which criticized Nikolai Kavalerov, a character who is presented as a pathetic, blithering, anti-communist. His benefactor, Andrei Babichev, lives a successful, fulfilling life and supports communism, yet he lacks emotion and vibrance like Kavalerov. Envy illustrates both a trust in communism's success as well as a warning against it's impersonal methods -- Olyesha's view of the Soviet Union. This trend toward personal interpretation was explained by Mikhail Sholokov, a true supporter of the genre, "Socialist realism is the art of the truth of life, comprehended and interpreted by the artist from

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground (1864/2008) comes across as a diary penned by a self-described “spiteful” and “unattractive” anonymous narrator (p. 7). The narrator’s own self-loathing characterized by self-alienation is so obvious, that he is often referred to by critics as the Underground Man (Frank 1961, p. 1). Yet this Underground Man is the central character of Dostoyevsky’s novel and represents a subversion of the typical courageous hero. In this regard, the Underground man is an anti-hero, since as a protagonist he not only challenges the typical literary version of a hero, but also challenges conventional thinking (Brombert 1999, p. 1).

The title of Mikhail Lermontov’s book, A Hero of Our Time, confused readers due to the moral depravity of its main character, Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin. Tsar Nicholas thought the title must have referred to Maxim Maximovich, as he was the only character that the Tsar could see to possess heroic qualities. However, Lermontov did intend the title to describe Pechorin. The title of A Hero of Our Time is a vehicle Lermontov uses to critique the flaws of his contemporary society by linking its problematic values to the unsavoury behaviour of Pechorin. In the foreword to the story, Lermontov clearly indicated A Hero of Our Time is intended to portray the shortcomings of his generation through the unscrupulous Pechorin. Pechorin, with his larger than life adventures and persona, is the “hero” that captures the individual aspirations of high society Russians. However, his heartlessness and unabashed selfishness turns these aspirations on their head to reveal the moral failings of society.

Some of the most tragic moments in Russian history occurred during the tumultuous period between the death of Vladimir Lenin and the rise of Joseph Stalin during the 1930s. This was a time of massive devastation during which almost 5 million peasants died of starvation due to the failures of collective farming. Thousands of men and women were also falsely accused of anti-patriotism and sent to Siberian labor camps in which they experienced rampant disease, physical and emotional abuse, and often execution. Vasily Grossman endeavors to discern who is to blame for these injustices through his novel “Everything Flows”. Grossman’s main character, Ivan, has just been released from almost a thirty year imprisonment following the death of Stalin. Through Ivan’s recollections of camp life and assimilation into Post-Stalinist Russia, Grossman reveals the forces he believes are at fault. However, his understanding of this guilt is far more complex as revealed through the means by which he evaluates the culpable factors. Grossman uses a method of assessment similar to a bottom-up analysis by beginning with the individual elements of the Communist Party and progressing to a larger holistic view of Russian civilization. This method allows for multiple factors to bear some of the blame without undue bias holding one entirely accountable. Thus, Grossman is arguing that the slave identity embedded in Russian history was responsible for the development of certain characteristics in Lenin 's

Like many works of literature, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich may be seen as a social commentary on the Soviet Union. The

However, this paper will focus not on modern American class structures, but on contem- porary Russian class structures as viewed through Chekhov’s Enemies and The Death of a Government Clerk. These stories (written in 1887 and 1883 respectively) both heavily fea- ture the minutia of vertical class interaction in nineteenth century Russia. With The Death of a Government Clerk displaying the rigid interactions within the government service, and Enemies showing the reader the less codified interactions between a physician (a member of the working class) and a man of wealth. Through these stories Chekhov highlights the limited ways interaction can take place between classes.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel known as Demons, Ivan Shatov is a tragic hero, but cannot be considered a patriot because he has no love for his country, Russia, and its people (Dostoevsky, 2016). He also has

The Soviet gulag system was notorious for the highly unethical procedures that took place within them and the obscure sentences that prisoners faced. The novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich gives readers a first-person view of the bleak daily events of the prisoners and even shares some of the absurd “crimes” they have committed. Some of the crimes include Shukhov, who was imprisoned on the idea that he was a spy representing the Germans and Buynovsky, a Navy captain that is imprisoned for befriending an English Admiral and receiving a gift from him. These sentences fit into the existential framework through the themes of absurdity and existence precedes essence; the prisoners are searching for answers to questions about why and

At first glance, it is understandable to assume that Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Gambler and F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned are incomparable and unrelated in every way. However, when exploring in detail the character development in each novel, an alternate verdict can be presented that shows, beyond peradventure, that both novels share similarities. Granted, The Gambler is about a tutor working for a Russian family and his evolution into a pathological gambler, where as The Beautiful and Damned is concentrated on the relationship of a wealthy young couple in the Roaring 20’s who taste the bittersweet consequences of extravagance as the book traces their mental, moral and physical disintegration. Nevertheless, both novels explore depression as a concomitant of the amalgamation between love and avarice. Both Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald, through different settings, character and circumstances, have created a grandiose psychological portrait of unrequited love as well as depression through addiction and loss.

Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a modern lawman whose sudden mortality forces him to evaluate the worth of his life and the life choices he has. Throughout the novella, Tolstoy reveals social norms and practices blindly followed by those in the upper-middle class. These norms bring to light modernity’s core values, which Tolstoy critiques through the actions Ivan Ilyich takes before his death, Ivan Ilyich’s revelation as he lies on his death bed, and the way Ivan Ilyich’s family, friends, and colleagues react to his illness and eventual death. In fact, The Death of Ivan Ilyich provides a critique on modernity as a whole; Tolstoy condemns the shallow, superficial lives the higher-ups in society lead, spurred on by the idea of modernity.

In the lecture titled Fathers and Children—Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament, Isaiah Berlin draws our attention to Turgenev's ambivalent attitude towards the hero of the novel, Bazarov. Turgenev is no doubt fascinated by Bazarov's destructive energy, and yet remains unable to stand firmly on Bazarov's side. Bazarov is not a revolutionist dreaming to build a utopian empire on the ruin of existing orders—he does not care to analyse what is it that he swears to destroy—but is a self-proclaimed nihilist vowing to clear the ground. The author almost wishes that the sheer force in Bazarov could be smoothened, be tempered and be steered to something constructive; but in his attempt to reshape Bazarov by subjecting him to the ordeal of love, he finds himself with no other choice but to shatter Bazarov altogether. Love ties one to the mundane in life at the present moment and renders one vulnerable to all the sentimentalism that a nihilist should contempt. Consequently a Bazarov in love must die.

Ahkmatova’s sacrifice and loyalty to her country and its people didn’t go unnoticed, and they loved and admired her deeply for her commitment to them, and to Russia. As D.M. Thomas explains in the introduction, “she had become deeply loved and revered by her countrymen. To them, she was the conscience of Russia; she had not fled to safety as other had done after the Revolution; she had chosen to stay and endure, and to ‘bear witness’. She died in 1966. Five thousand people, mostly the young, crowded to her requiem mass in a Leningrad church,” (Thomas 2-3). A resounding theme of Ahkmatova’s poetry is bearing witness and being a voice from the darkness to speak against the machine of communism and socialist realism.