Student Proposal

The Triumph of Free Expression Over the Repressive Policies of the Stalinist Regime as Examined Through Children's Stories by M. Zoshchenko

I am interested in exploring how liberty was expressed in the Soviet Union, especially in the light of its recent dissolution. With the help of my faculty sponsor, I have picked a specific author through whom I would like to trace the expression of liberty despite the despotism of the Soviet regime. M. Zoshchenko was a satirical writer during Stalin's regime. He wrote a series of children's short stories about Lenin. Zoshchenko wrote these stories in two layers, the surface layer of a child's tale and the underlying layer of criticism of the Soviet regime. This layer of criticism made it past the government censors, and the stories were published and disseminated to hundreds of people. Although the children who read them did not perceive the social commentary in Zoshchenko's stories, the adults who read them understood the freedom of expression preserved in them.

In a close study of his Lenin short stories, I would like to explore how Zoshchenko was able to bring this freedom openly to hundreds of Soviets during some of the worst years of the Communist oppression in the Soviet Union. Reading from Russian manuscripts, as most of these stories have not ever been translated into English, I would like to see how Zoshchenko's simple child's language could contain politically dangerous material. I would like to examine the skill which he used in choosing words so carefully that he could get such material by the Soviet censors. I would like to look closely at Zoshchenko's ability to communicate something beyond the surface.

Examining Zoshchenko's phrasing closely, I would like to read at least one story a week. I would translate each story into English and study each word, phrase, sentence and paragraph for the meaning that underlies the child's tale. I shall also have to research Lenin and Stalin in order to better explain Zoshchenko's satire. In order to demonstrate how Zoshchenko's work was an expression of liberty during a time of suppressed rights, I shall specifically research censorship during Stalin's regime.

As a study of liberty triumphing over repression, my work will relate to my sponsor's research project. In this book my advisor plans to address how the power of the word is stronger than the power of political regimes. He will discuss how the universal human values encoded in culture, especially in literature, have turned out to be much stronger than the repression of authoritarian regimes. Specifically he is researching the ideas formulated and preserved by people in the worst year of the Soviet regime (about 1929-1953).

Eventually I would like to do research along similar lines although with a more current slant, focusing more on the fall itself of communism both in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. I will be able to broaden the research I am proposing to do this summer into a senior thesis and pursue this research in graduate school. What I would like to do in the immediate future is pursue an individualized major as a Dean's Scholar combining not only my interest in Russian and International Relations, but also my interest in French. This research would not only increase my comprehension of the Russian language, but it also would give me a better understanding of the Russian people and their social situation.

In addition to Zoshchenko's stories, my bibliography will include the following sources on Lenin and Stalin:

Cliff, Tony. Lenin. London: Pluto Press, 1975-79.
Gill, Graeme. Stalinism. Houndmills, England: Macmillan, 1990.
Hyde, H. Montgomery. Stalin: The History of a Dictator. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux; 1972.
Service, Robert. Lenin, a Political Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
Tucker, Robert C. Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990.
Urban, George, ed. Stalinism. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982.

Faculty Letter of Support