il'f and petrov’s zolotoi telenok: russian at the periphery, asian at...

ALTERNATIVE CULTURE 43

Il'f and Petrov’s Zolotoi telenok: Russian at the Periphery, Asian at the Core HOLLY MYERS UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

A t the various levels of description, characterization, and language, Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov‘s 1931 novel, Zolotoi telenok (Little Golden Calf), illustrates the complex, evolving, and ambivalent nature of the Soviet Union‘s relationship to

its Central Asian Republics. In a close reading of the narrative set in Turkestan, this paper explores the authors‘ insights into this complicated situation, as revealed through their clever and sometimes subtle satirical depiction of the Soviet Union‘s relationship to, and impact on, this developing region in the early twentieth century.

The late seventeenth century saw sudden, radical, even violent efforts to westernize Russian culture and society. In the costly construction of St. Petersburg and Peterhof, the compulsory cutting of beards, the required adoption of modern clothing styles, and the use of French rather than Russian at court, Peter the Great strove to establish stronger and closer connections between his Russian Empire and Europe. This not only drew Russia toward the West, but also effectively and forcibly distanced Russian national identity from its Eastern roots, artificially severing those traditional ties. The West (at this point in history, synonymous with Europe) thus became representative of all things good, rational, modern, and enlightened; the East, on the other hand, was the counterpoint to this brilliant West, and Asia became representative of a discomforting ―Other‖: alien and unknown, irrational, backward, and ignorant. At best, Asiatic cultures were romanticized for perceived exoticism. Such a dichotomy was naturally problematic for Russians, aware of their ancient Asiatic heritage. For many, this lineage dated back to nomads who arrived in Russia with the armies of Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century. As Napoleon once said, ―Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar‖ (Figes 361). This tension has been felt in Russia ever since: its presence, consequences, and future a much-debated theme of Russian writers, intellectuals, and leaders for centuries. Most prominent among these debates, for example, was that between the Slavophiles and Westernizers: a heated and well-documented

44 STUDIES IN SLAVIC CULTURES

controversy that continued throughout the nineteenth century. With the establishment of the Soviet Union, however, this question changed dramatically: the West suddenly lost its cultural caché in Russia, representing capitalist greed and corruption, and Soviet leaders went so far as to characterize it as the enemy, and the West as the “Other.‖

This rearrangement of cultural and social values opened new possibilities for reconnection to the East. For the first time in centuries, Russian writers, intellectuals, and leaders could focus positive and popular attention on Asiatic elements, which had been marginalized by the legacy of Peter the Great‘s westernization, pushed to the periphery of Russian society and culture. The famous duo of Soviet satirists, Il'f and Petrov, took advantage of this new epoch in Russian attitudes toward the East in their novel Zolotoi telenok. In his quest to become a millionaire, Ostap Bender ends up in Turkestan. Taking advantage of the opportunity created by the changing value system in their new Soviet society, Il'f and Petrov make several observations and rather pointed comments about the past, present, and future of this morphing relationship between Russia, the West, and the East. Il'f and Petrov share with their readers a refreshingly objective perspective on the Russian treatment of this historically discredited and marginalized region in Central Asia.

In the twentieth century, scholars increasingly turned their attention to the question of writing responsibly about the Developing World. The key issue lies in the relationship between writer and subject. Often the writers were themselves from a culture that had historically subjugated or ―conquered‖ the area about which they were writing, and this power dynamic in the relationship between writer and subject caused several scholars in the twentieth century to question the validity or trustworthiness of this type of academic writing. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida, for example, developed the critical approach of deconstruction, which seeks to identify the irreconcilable assumptions on which a text is founded, demonstrating the opposing meanings that ―deconstruct‖ a work‘s apparent message. Michel Foucault worked extensively on interplay between power, knowledge, and discourse. Maxine Rodinson took a more pointed direction in his work, critiquing European writing on the Middle East. Edward Said, perhaps the most well-known critic of Orientalism, also evaluated Western (particularly English, French, and American) writing on the Middle East.


Following in the footsteps of Derrida, Foucault, and Rodinson, Said argues that Western writings about the Orient must be inspected for ―Eurocentric‖ prejudice, and that these portrayals of the East rest on false, even racist, assumptions. He connects the long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture with Western colonial and imperial ambitions. According to Said, this history of European colonial rule and political domination over the East necessarily distorts any European‘s writing about the East, however knowledgeable, well-meaning and sympathetic the writer. Indeed, one finds that Western writings about the Orient often depict the East as irrational, weak, feminized, and as the ―Other,‖ in contrast with the rational, strong, masculine West. Scholars in many different fields have pointed out that this contrast is derived from an assumption that there is an inherent difference between West and East, and, because the Orient is the ―Other,‖ this assumed difference is described via the perceived ―fundamental characteristics‖ of an Oriental person.

As centuries of debate amongst Russian writers, intellectuals, and leaders have proven, Russia may not be easily situated in the geological or cultural dichotomy of East versus West. However, it is a formidable power compared to its Third World neighbors, and this historic role of power in its relationship to territories in the Caucasus, the Steppes, and Central Asia does situate Russia as ―Western‖ and those other territories as ―Eastern‖ in the dichotomy that Said and other scholars have identified. Though Russia did not colonize these territories quite like the Western colonization of many parts of the East, nonetheless there was a definite exertion of control over these territories, and the consequences in both situations were similar. The oppressive attention of a dominant power was felt politically, culturally, and linguistically by the ethnic peoples living in a European colony, as well as by those in a territory absorbed by the Russian Empire (or later, the Soviet Union).

Arguably, the expansion of Russian imperial power to the east and south is analogous to ―conquering the West‖ in the United States; these both are variants of the colonialism that Said and others point to in their treatises on Orientalism. Geoffrey Hosking notes that these annexed territories were quickly and methodically absorbed into the Russian empire:

The stability of the empire was maintained over time by co-opting local elites and integrating them into the Russian nobility and


bureaucracy. This co-option had the effect both of making the empire multi-national in principle and of widening the gap between elites and masses of all ethnic groups, including the Russians themselves. On the other hand, relations between the diverse peoples were markedly less racist than in, say, the British Empire…The Russian culture and language were tangible integrating factors for most ethnic groups, but did not succeed, as they did in China, in obliterating and replacing other cultures. Whereas in China high culture was endogenous and worked along with the official ideology in maintaining order and social integration, in Russia high culture was to a large extent borrowed from outside and became subversive of official values. China was the heartland of Asia, while Russia was on the periphery of Europe, with all the advantages and disadvantages which that position entailed. (Hosking 40-41)

Indeed, Hosking argues that one could consider the Central Asian region a genuine Russian colony because its status differed drastically from that of other parts of the empire in several ways. Its inhabitants, for example, ―were known as inorodtsy, a category common enough in other contemporary empires, but not applied elsewhere in the Russian one: it implied an alien and inferior political status‖ (Hosking 389). Therefore, it seems plausible to expect that there would be evidence of ―Orientalism‖ in Russian and Soviet writings about the Caucasus, the Steppes, and Central Asia, though this Orientalism would differ somewhat from that which Said and others identified in American, British, and French writing. Russian culture was already peripheral, in comparison to American, British, and French cultures, and it was not as aggressive or successful in challenging the even more peripheral ethnic cultures in these annexed areas.

In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire expanded to include territories in the Steppes and Central Asia, known collectively as Turkestan. These territories consisted of what are today the five independent republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. This paper focuses on an example of early Soviet literature that examines ethnic peoples from those annexed territories in the Central Asian region, as they may be considered marginalized and ―Eastern‖ in their relationship to Russia and the Soviet Union.

There are several examples of works in nineteenth-century Russian literature that depict native people of the Caucasus, the


Steppes, and Central Asia in exactly the Eurocentric, imperialist, racist, and essentialist terms against which Said and other scholars had cautioned. These characters are indeed exotic, irrational, feminized, and ―Other.‖1 Nineteenth-century examples of such literary references are rather more straightforward than similarly themed depictions in twentieth-century works of Soviet literature. In some ways, the Soviet Union merely continued the Russian Empire‘s tradition of staffing the political and cultural institutions with native elites in these territories. Martin Malia describes the purpose of this policy as ―to appease local nationalism by dignifying it, and at the same co-opt it for the purposes of building socialism‖ (439). In other words, Malia says that Soviet nationality policy was another aspect of the all-out mobilization of the population for state-building and extensive economic growth. However, this relationship became further complicated during and after the Bolshevik Revolution, as the new leaders in Moscow sought to more fully unite non-Russians in peripheral republics and territories with Russians living in Russia, to incorporate all peoples of the Soviet Union into the ideological brotherhood of communism.2 This added dimension to the relationship between writer and subject is another interesting angle to consider in the literary portrayals of this cultural relationship.3

Another new development in early Soviet literature of the 1930s is the gradual appearance of non-Russian Soviet writers, who wrote about their own ethnic cultures. These authors were Soviet citizens, writing under the directive of Socialist Realism. Thus they were native writers, writing about their native culture, but in the language and terms of the Soviet leaders in Moscow. Writers from each of the five republics of former Turkestan wrote in Russian as well as in their native ethnic languages, many describing contemporary life in their homeland as well as traditional figures in their respective native cultures.4

The specific focus of this paper, however, is Il'f and Petrov‘s novel, Zolotoi telenok. Published serially in the monthly magazine 30 dnei over the course of 1931, this novel revives the character of Dvenadtsat' stul'ev’s (The Twelve Chairs, 1928), Ostap Bender, who somehow survived the attempt on his life at the end of the first novel. Satires typically point out the absurdity of society, mocking the cultures that they depict. Therefore, in Zolotoi telenok, we observe not a frank portrayal of Central Asian culture from the Russian perspective, but rather the satirical Russian perspective of the actual


Russian perspective of the ethnic culture. Soviet censors initially deemed it a superficial satire, its critique of society not harsh enough, and at first even resisted publishing it in book form. However, Zolotoi telenok received much enthusiasm in the United States, France, Germany, Austria, and England. Aleksandra Il'f, daughter of the famous satirist, wrote in 2009 that this enthusiasm was due to the fact that the writers ―created a global image of their era, one that was famously more accurate and objective than many ‗serious‘ literary works of the 1920s-1930s‖ (Ilf and Petrov, Little Golden Calf 11).

In Zolotoi telenok, Ostap Bender is the same rogue that readers know from Dvenadtsat' stul'ev, who is trying to ―earn‖ money by rather nontraditional methods. This time he hears about an underground millionaire, Alexandr Koreiko, who made his money by living scrupulously on forty-six rubles a month and through various illegal enterprises, taking full advantage of the widespread corruption in the period of the New Economic Policy. Living and working in a city by the Black Sea, Koreiko hides all of his money in a suitcase, waiting for the fall of the Soviet Union so that he can finally spend the money without drawing undue attention. When Bender learns of Koreiko‘s existence, he enlists some petty criminals along with an extremely naive car driver, and begins his blackmail scheme. Koreiko, however, manages to elude Bender‘s grasp temporarily by escaping to Turkestan, where he works on the great Turkestan-Siberian Railroad. Bender follows him, arriving in Turkestan just in time for the big celebration of the railroad‘s completion, and finally succeeds in blackmailing Koreiko into paying one million rubles for Bender‘s folder of damning evidence against him. The novel continues, but, for the purposes of this paper, I would like to focus on the events that happen in Turkestan.

Before discussing the representations of Turkestan in Zolotoi telenok, I would like to spend some time discussing Central Asia at the time of Il'f and Petrov. Central Asia was a vast territory composed of five countries that share the Muslim faith, mostly Turkic languages, and a history of Soviet control. The area was geographically isolated from Russia and most of Asia by desert, mountains, and the Caspian Sea. Much of the land, however, has always been extremely fertile, making the area attractive to agriculturalists. The region attracted further attention when it straddled the Silk Road caravan routes between China and Europe.5 The idea for a railroad that would connect Turkestan to Siberia, and thus to Russia, was first discussed in


the Russian Duma in 1886. However, it was not until 1926 that the Soviets decided to adopt this project to connect the cities of Tashkent and Novosibirsk.6 Preparations for building the Turkestan-Siberian (TurkSib) Railroad began in 1927, and the track was completed by 1930, ahead of schedule. During the summer of 1930, the first trains ran the new tracks.

According to the ―Mysterious Turksib,‖ a website in English and Russian on the Turkestan-Siberian Railroad,

The Turksib had bad luck…For the entire history of its existence, it was overshadowed by its distinguished relative—the Trans-Siberian railroad, or Transsib. The Turksib was built fifteen years later than [sic] the Transsib. It is six times shorter…There are much [sic] fewer passenger trains on the Turksib, and the tourists are rare guests in the steppes of Central Asia…The purpose of this project is to restore the historical justice and to tell you a story about the Mysterious Turksib!‖ (Zinoviev)

Although the website calls itself ―Mysterious Turksib‖ in English, the Russian title is ―Neizvestnyi Turksib.‖ Of course, the Russian word neizvestnyi is literally translated as ―unknown‖ or ―unfamiliar.‖ The word ―mysterious,‖ however, seems to draw on exactly that romanticism or exoticism that is commonly seen in Western depictions of the East.

Il'f and Petrov ascribe a central role in the novel‘s plot to the Turkestan-Siberian Railroad, so the symbolism of this particular railway should not be overlooked. The building of the Turksib was considered a feat of modern technology.7 Il'f and Petrov, however, do not seem to celebrate this achievement in Zolotoi telenok. The depiction of hard labor that went into constructing it, the over-the-top celebrations of its completion, and the total desertion of the railway line once it had been so publicly extolled,—all suggest that Il'f and Petrov do not intend to glorify this as a proud Soviet achievement. Thus, we should consider other authorial motives for the inclusion and prominence of the Turksib in Zolotoi telenok.

The narrative emphasis on modes of transportation in the novel‘s opening provides further evidence that Il'f and Petrov intend some other symbolic meaning for the Turksib in this satire. The epigraph to the novel reads: ―Look up and down before you cross the street. (Traffic Regulation).‖8 This idea is continued immediately in the first few paragraphs of the novel:


Pedestrians just need to be loved. Pedestrians comprise the larger part of humanity.

More than that: its better part. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected multi-storied building, laid sewage systems and water pipes, paved the streets and illuminated them with electric lights. It was they who spread culture throughout the world…

And then, when everything was ready, when our native planet had assumed a comparatively well-appointed mein, motorists appeared.

It must be noted that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians. But somehow, motorists immediately forgot about that. They began to run over the clever, meek pedestrians. The streets, cre-ated by pedestrians, were taken over by motorists. Roads grew twice as wide, while sidewalks narrowed down to the width of a cigar band. Pedestrians be-gan flattening themselves against the walls of build-ings in alarm.

Pedestrians lead martyrs‘ lives in the big city, where a sort of transportational ghetto has been cre-ated for them. They are allowed to cross the street only at crosswalks—in other words, only at the pre-cise place where street traffic is heaviest, and where the thread by which the pedestrian‘s life usually hangs is easiest to break. [….]

Only in small Russian towns is the pedestrian still loved and respected. There, he still owns the streets; he strolls along in the road without a care and crosses it in the most intricate fashion, in all manner of directions. (Ilf and Petrov, Little Golden Calf 37-39)9

At that moment, Ostap Bender enters the narrative, on foot. Though he is as yet unnamed, any reader familiar with Dvenadtsat' stul'ev will immediately recognize his attire and manner. The fact that the protagonist arrives on foot after such a long narrative diatribe against motorists suggests a surprising value system within the world of the novel. Here, modes of transportation are looked at a bit askance, supposed feats of technological advancement are judged with some


suspicion, and indeed all modern ―progresses‖ are suddenly seen in a different light.

This is surprising because the Soviet cultural context of the 1920s and 1930s implies a very different value system, where technological advances are repeatedly glorified in political and literary statements. This trend of promoting Socialist achievements in industrialization can be found in any number of literary works from this time period, including Fedor Gladkov‘s Tsement (Cement, 1925), Nikolai Ostrovskii‘s Kak zakalialas' stal' (1934), and Iurii Krymov‘s Tanker Derbent (1938), as well as Vasilii Kazin‘s Belomorskaia poema (Belomorsk Poem, 1936-62), which celebrates the building of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. Of course, this reading of Il'f and Petrov‘s jibe at modern technological advances holds only if we take the above passage at face value.

In any case, this opening signals a particular sort of attention to modes of transportation, and this attention continues with the introduction of the Turkestan-Siberian Railroad, the setting of one of the most decisive plot points. After fatally catastrophic failure in Dvenadtsat' stul'ev, and after hundreds of pages of thwarted attempts in Zolotoi telenok, Ostap Bender finally succeeds: he gets his hands on that large pile of money. And this happens in Turkestan.

Il'f and Petrov emphasize this railroad not only by making it the scene of a seeming denouement, but also in their narrative treatment of it. Whereas the novel‘s narration had faithfully followed Ostap Bender up to this point in the novel, this pattern suddenly breaks in order to accompany the southbound Turksib train from the very beginning of its track, where it departs from the station in Moscow.10 The readers accompany the southbound train from the beginning of its journey, even though our protagonist joins the train and the narrative much later, jumping on somewhere farther down the line. The narrative abandonment of Bender emphasizes the symbolism in the journey from ―Western‖ Moscow, on one end of a spectrum, to the exotic ―East‖ of deserts, kazaki, nomads, and camels, on the other end. True, half of the railroad is built from the East. How, then, is modernization imposed on the East? Is it not perhaps Eastern influence that is imposed on the West? Although the railroad is constructed from both end points, the narrative follows Russian and other ―Western‖ correspondents traveling from Moscow to Turkestan, which suggests that this narrative focuses on the relationship of West to East, and not the other way around.

Furthermore, as trains had become well established symbols of


modernity by the 1930s, this also suggests that the Turksib may symbolize the imposition of Western ―civilization‖ on a ―primitive‖ native culture. The union of these two spectrums: West and East, Russia and Turkestan, civilized and primitive, is further symbolized in the union of the train tracks in Turkestan at the point of completion. As this railroad was constructed by two teams, each moving toward each other from opposite points on the railroad, thus, this construction plan is also conveniently suggestive. The narrative treatment of the Turksib establishes and illustrates the existence of a spectrum, and the construction and subsequent travel of the tracks point readers to the physical and symbolic union of these extremes.

Once readers arrive at this union-place, along with Bender and his traveling companions of Russian and international journalists, Il'f and Petrov comment on the meeting of West and East. Before delving into anything particularly interesting, the authors satirize the routine romanticism of Central Asia with the most stereotypical descriptions: after three boring days of reportedly useless desert, ―a wide expanse of possibility opened up before the foreigners as soon as they left Orenburg. They saw their first camel, their first yurt, and their first Kazakh, who wore a pointed fur hat and held a whip‖ (Il'f and Petrov, Zolotoi telenok 333).11 When the train stops at a water tank, the narrator mockingly reports that twenty cameras were aimed at one camel, and the journalists began writing about the usual exotic themes: “the exoticism had begun, with its ships of the desert, freedom-loving sons of the steppes, and all those other draft horses of the romantic imagination‖ (333).12 In this short sentence, Il'f and Petrov name two metaphors for Oriental imagery, familiar to the point of cliché: ―ships of the desert‖ for camels, and ―freedom-loving sons of the steppe‖ for the native people living there. After this brief list, they weakly add a phrase that evokes a sense of ―etcetera‖ or ―you know what we mean,‖ further implying that these are not significant images of the area, but rather intended to poke fun at the meaninglessness of conventional depictions.

Having completed this ironic nod to the usual drivel about the East, the narrative then turns to a much more interesting contemplation of Eastern versus Western in the meeting between a Japanese man and a Central Asian man:

The Japanese diplomat was standing an arm‘s length away from a Kazakh. Both were looking silently at each other. Their flattish faces, stiff mustaches, yellow lacquered skin and slightly puffy,


narrow eyes were absolutely identical. They could‘ve passed for twins, if the Kazakh hadn‘t been in a sheepskin coat belted with a cotton chintz sash, while the Japanese was in a grey, London-tailored suit. Or if the Kazakh hadn‘t learned to read just last year, while the Japanese had earned two degrees from two universities, in Tokyo and Paris, twenty years ago. The diplomat took a step back, bent over his viewfinder, and clicked his shutter. The Kazakh laughed, mounted his shaggy little steed, and trotted off into the steppe (333-34).13

The physical similarities of race between the Japanese diplomat and the Kazakh are contrasted with their vast cultural differences. This excerpt emphasizes first their different dress, and then their different educational backgrounds. The third-person narrator reveals unusual omniscience here, somehow knowing that the Kazakh learned to read a mere year previous. Such casual knowledge smacks of narrative play with Western stereotypes of Eastern peoples. Furthermore, after a silent moment of staring face to face, the Japanese diplomat takes a step away, literally and symbolically distancing himself from this ancient kinsman. The Kazakh merely laughs at this and trots away on his horse. The narrative description of this event places Central Asia further on the periphery, marginalized even in comparison to other geographic and linguistic ―Eastern‖ cultures.

Il'f and Petrov continue with some not-so-subtle literary commentary regarding the traditional use of Oriental exoticism in writing. In order to earn some money on the train, Bender puts together a ―writing kit,‖ composed of two parts, for journalists to use when writing articles celebrating the TurkSib Railroad. The first part consists of lexicon: a ridiculous hodgepodge assortment of words that Bender recommends be used in such a journalistic task. The words are organized into lists of nouns, adjectives, verbs, artistic epithets, and other parts of speech. The list of nouns, for example, includes such varied words as kliki, chas, and zhizn' (rather commonplace), trudiashchiesia and prisluzhnik (potentially Soviet jargon), and Vaal and Molokh. The last two nouns seem to refer to pagan deities, though Vaal is most likely a misspelling of the ancient Near East god, Baal. The wide array of words in the remaining three lists is similarly incongruous.

The second part of Bender‘s writing kit gives examples of a lead article, an essay-feuilleton, and two poems, one of which is called the “Eastern Version.‖ Each of these writing examples use the word lists


in part one. In the last line of the first poem, Bender combines the mythological pagan figures, Vaal and Molokh, into one entity: Moloch-Vaal. The senselessness of the reference, meaningless on numerous levels, serves to emphasize the poem‘s overall lack of depth and a disturbing lack of attention to actual authenticity.

This lack of attention is further mocked in the glossary of Aziatskii ornament, which Ostap Bender includes at the end of the writing kit. Sixteen Turkish words and phrases are translated into Russian. However, many of these translations are loose in the extreme, or even wrong. For example, Bender blandly translates both Turkish words ―bai” and “basmach” as ―nekhoroshii chelovek.‖ Perhaps the reader could believe that these Turkish words are synonyms, but some suspicion would serve him well in this case. In fact, bai refers to a wealthy man, such as a feudal lord in pre-Soviet times. Of course, according to Soviet ideology, a feudal lord would be a bad man, but that is not the correct translation of the Turkish word. On the other hand, basmach is much worse than nekhoroshii chelovek , as it means something closer to ―thug‖ or ―gangster.‖14 Knowledge of Turkish is required in order to grasp the full implication of this joke, but the irresponsibility in the writing kit that has already been pointed out—for that matter, the irresponsibility inherent in the very idea of a writing kit—should alert any reader that these translations are likely less than wholly accurate.

The most hilarious example of these questionable translations, however, does not require any knowledge of Turkish. The twelfth word on this list of sixteen words and phrases is ―shaitan,‖ correctly translated as ―devil.‖ The thirteenth word is ―arba,‖ correctly translated as ―wagon.‖ Immediately following, at number fourteen, is “shaitan-arba,‖ which Ostap Bender translates as ―Central-Asian RR‖ (322).15 Looking at the preceding two words, the astute reader understands that the ―Asiatic‖ phrase, which, according to Bender, means Central Asian railroad, literally means ―devil-wagon.‖ Although no inside knowledge of the native language is necessary in order to see the satire, it does require careful attention from the reader. Il'f and Petrov make a subtle statement against irresponsible writing about the East, as well as against the clueless writers and inattentive readers who should notice this strange translation, but do not. In making this joke, which receives absolutely no commentary from the authors or Bender within the narrative of the novel, Il'f and Petrov assume in their readers a level of perspicacity far beyond that of


the journalists. Indeed, no narrative commentary is necessary beyond the depiction of the Soviet journalist Ukhudshanskii, who is overjoyed with this document that Bender has created for him. Bender receives twenty-five Mongolian rubles from an entirely satisfied, if dim-witted, customer, who does not catch the joke that has been played on him.

The novel‘s harsh satirization of literary traditions is also evident in the pact that writers make amongst themselves not to write the usual rubbish about Eastern subjects. After the train has arrived at the completion of the Turksib railroad, and the mass meeting of self-congratulatory speeches and other official events has concluded, the Soviet journalist Palamidov makes a suggestion to his comrades: “Let‘s all agree not to write anything tasteless.‖ Another Soviet journalist, Lavuaz'ian, chimes in to agree: ―Tastelessness is disgusting! It‘s horrible!‖ (356)16

And so, on the way to the cafeteria tent, the correspondents agreed unanimously not to write about uzun-kulak, which means The Long Ear, which in turn means the telegraph of the steppe. Every single person who has ever been to the East has written about this, and it is impossible to read about it anymore. No more writing sketches under the title ―The Legend of Issyk-Kul'.‖ Enough stylized Eastern tastelessness! (356)17

Of course, two journalists later break the pact to send exactly this kind of literary drivel to their publishers back home. They are caught in the act by their peers, who chastise them soundly for this behavior. At first the journalists seem more outraged that the writer, who did write an essay about the Legend of the Lake Issyk-Kul, did not choose some more outlandish, exotic translation of the legend‘s title. However, Palamidov quickly steers the discussion back to the real issue at hand, reminding them that they had all agreed not to write about this legend. The beleaguered writer sighs and protests simply: “Uzun-Kulak exists, and we have to take that fact into consideration‖ (362).18 The chapter ends with these troubling words. Il'f and Petrov seem to suggest in this scene that one must write about these people and places that do exist in our world, but that writers still may lack any responsible way in which to write about them. In this passage, like with the document that Bender creates for Ukhudshanskii, the authors satirize the lack of creativity in journalists, which Il'f and Petrov knew well from their own experience working as journalists.

After Bender succeeds in swindling Koreiko out of a million


rubles, they somehow become friends and try to make exit plans together. Unfortunately, the trains that brought them to Turkestan have already left without them, and no more trains will be passing through for months. This fact is yet another example of Il'f and Petrov‘s marked lack of enthusiasm for the ―technological accomplishment‖ of the Turksib Railroad. After an unsuccessful attempt to catch a departing airplane, Bender concludes that only one option remains: ―convert to Islam and make the trip by camel.‖19 Thus Bender and Korieko resort to an exit from Turkestan by means of camel, and a ―primitive‖ mode of transportation saves them where modern modes of transportation fail.

At the beginning of the journey on camel, Bender is sent into ecstasy over the scenery around him, everything amusing his rascally soul. He jokingly refers to Koreiko as Alexander Ibn Ivanovich, an Easternization of his friend‘s Russian name, and he refers to himself as Colonel Lawrence. The narrative picks up this light-hearted enthusiasm. However, in calling Koreiko‘s camel a ―feeble ship of the desert,‖ the narrative also makes clear that Bender‘s enthusiasm is naïve and founded in that romantic tastelessness so harshly mocked earlier in the novel, with respect to the journalists on the train.

―I‘m the Emir-Dynamite!‖ he shouted, rocking gently back and forth on his high spine. ―If we don‘t get proper food in two days, I‘m going to instigate a tribal revolt. Word of honor! I‘ll appoint myself the Prophet‘s plenipotentiary and declare a holy war, a jihad. On Denmark, for example. Why did the Danes torture their prince Hamlet so?‖ (372)20

Significantly, Lawrence of Arabia was called ―Emir-Dynamite‖ for his skill in using explosives to disable Turkish train routes (439). This silly Emir Dynamite changes his tune several days later, however, when only the ropes remain of the sheep, and the mares‘ milk had all been drunk. At this point, Bender merely mutters to himself some famous, if depressing, lines of Lermontov: ―Far off in the sandy Arabian steppe, the sun cast its rays on a trio of palms‖ (373).21 This transition is not only highly entertaining, but logical, as the high-spirited Ostap Bender spends grueling days traveling by camel through the desert. However, it also points out to readers the absurdity, futility, or even danger, that lies in this Russian exoticism of the East.

After this transformation has occurred, Bender and Koreiko reach


an ancient cemetery on the eighth day of their journey. The corpses had not been buried but placed on the ground with stone cowls erected over them. The narrator remarks: ―the Ancient East was lying in its sweltering graves‖ (373).22 This morbidity seems slightly out of place in the generally light and fun story; indeed, this tone is short-lived, contained within this terse, solitary sentence of commentary from the narrator. Both the sudden change in tone and its surprising pithiness highlight this passage, making it stand out from the rest of the narration. This is one of the ways in which Il'f and Petrov underline the seriousness with which they actually treat the East in this novel.

This more serious treatment of the East is upheld by the continuation of the plot, though the familiar, humorous tone returns. The two weary travelers reach a little town that Ostap knows from his past travels. He excitedly tells Koreiko that the town is not any worse than Baghdad, with a delightful bar called ―Beneath the Moon‖ and “flat roofs, native orchestras, nice little restaurants in the Eastern style, sweet wines, legendary damsels, and forty thousand skewers of Turkish, Tatar, Karian, Mesopotamian, and Odessan shishkebab‖ (373).23 Once they arrive, however, Bender finds it not as he remembers:

The Under the Moon wine cellar wasn‘t there any-more. To Ostap‘s amazement, the streets on which its tambourines and cymbals had sounded weren‘t there either. Instead, there was a straight European road that, along its entire length, was being devel-oped on both sides. There were fences everywhere, alabaster dust hung in the air, and trucks brought the already-warm air to white-hot incandescence. (374)24

Given the opening of the novel, this emphasis on a new, European, modern street, and the effect that trucks traversing it have on the atmosphere, is significant. The clear implication is that this evolution is a negative change—much like the evolution affected by the modern automobile on innocent pedestrians. This is not the speech of any character, by rather the words of the third-person narrator. Though emotionally-charged words are not used, the description in this scene within the context of the novel‘s values, does not easily allow any other reading. The description of this evolution is permeated with the strong sense that something is wrong.

Bender, trying to salvage the situation, finally remembers another


little place, which had displayed a sign with verse that its owner from Baku composed himself:

Respect yourself Respect us Respect the Caucasus Visit us. (343)

Anne O. Fisher‘s new translation of Zolotoi telenok into English includes an appendix, which lists almost three pages of krylatye frazy (catchphrases) from the novel that have become a vital part of Russian cultural language. The short verse above is at the very end of Fisher‘s list. Bender and Koreiko, however, do not find this verse as they had expected: ―instead, the sheikhs‘ gaze fell on a cardboard placard with Arabic and Russian letters proclaiming: City Museum of Fine Arts” (374).25 Thus, all of the Eastern elements that Bender remembered have been replaced by European-style buildings and establishments. The regional pride expressed in Baku‘s sign has been replaced by a bilingual placard that is drily informational and cheaply cardboard—nothing more. The narrative implication, though not yet explicitly stated, is that something special has been lost in these replacements.

Inside the City Museum of Fine Arts, the travelers meet a local young man, who is very enthusiastic about showing them the sights. While the narrator refers to the two Russian travelers as ―sheikhs,‖ a term that might normally be applied to the native people of this region, the local would-be-guide is not a ―sheikh,‖ but is described as “a shaven-headed youth wearing a Bukharan tiubeteika made of carpet‖ (375).26 In what may even be considered an example of ostranenie, meant to create unnatural and unexpected distance in one‘s perception of the familiar, this familiar-made-unfamiliar characterization of the Russians and of a local youth is further evidence of the cultural confusion that is occurring in this Central Asian town.27 The ―youth,‖ never named, leads Bender (the ―smooth operator‖) and Koreiko back to the new European street:

―Socialism Prospect!‖ he said, inhaling the ala-baster dust with pleasure. ―Ah! What wonderful air! Just think what‘s going to be here a year from now! Asphalt! A bus! An irrigation institute! A tropical institute!‖ […]

―And what‘s the situation here with those…with those little Asiatic-style taverns, you know, with tam-


bourines and cymbals?‖ the smooth operator asked impatiently.

―We got rid of them,‖ the youth answered indif-ferently. ―It was well past time to destroy that infec-tion, that breeding ground of epidemics. We just choked out the last den of iniquity this spring. It was called Under the Moon.‖

―You choked them out?‖ Koreiko gasped. ―Word of honor! But we opened an industrial-

scale kitchen instead. European cuisine. The dishes are washed and dried using electricity. Statistics show a drastic reduction in stomach disorders.‖

―Such goings-on!‖ the smooth operator ex-claimed, covering his face with his hands (375-76).28

As the tour continues, the travelers, increasingly horrified, and readers, increasingly uncomfortable, learn that the town‘s native bazaar is about to be taken down, that there will soon be a hospital and a cooperative center in the town. They also find out that prostitution has gone down sharply, that the native orchestras had been replaced by their local Philharmonic Orchestra, and that a new, large symphonic quartette, named after Bebel and Paganini, has been formed. Their guide is most excited, however, to show his guests the place where an obelisk, the column of Marxism, will soon stand in the town. He approaches the site on tiptoe, leading Bender and Koreiko by the hand, in a manner that can only be called ―exulted reverence.‖ Ostap Bender chastens the young man: ―But won‘t you miss the exoticism? It‘s Baghdad, after all!‖ Their young guide becomes angry, retorting, ―It‘s nice for you, for people just passing through, but we have to live here‖ (376).29

This is perhaps the most haunting line in Il'f and Petrov‘s treatment of Soviet influence in Zolotoi telenok. Of course, Bender and Koreiko‘s motives for bemoaning the loss of exotic food, music, and ladies has little to do with cultural respect and responsibility, but the reader should perceive a more balanced message about the interaction between Western and Eastern cultures in the Soviet Union. It certainly is terrible for a culture to lose its traditions, but it is also irresponsible to dismiss—because of that loss—the good that results from safe cafeterias, clean hospitals, and declining prostitution. The satirists capture well the conflict between East and West, despite their derision for Western writing on the East. The commendable even-


handedness with which they write about the East may be due, in part, to the deconstructive tendencies of satire, in which all outlooks can be mocked without necessarily offering or promoting any better vision. As Karen Ryan, a leading scholar in Russian satire, has stated, satire played ―a significant role in attempts to achieve lustration in the Soviet Union…Certainly all Russian satirists claim the goal of reform through exposure and criticism‖ (8). In Zolotoi telenok, Il'f and Petrov‘s satire may be considered protreptic, advocating that Soviet culture is prescribed and superior. However, as can be seen from the difficulties that were clearly present when Soviet censors resisted publishing Zolotoi telenok in book form, this depiction of the relationship between the Soviet leadership and Turkestan was far from propagandist literature.

Il'f and Petrov judge those who would judge either perspective as better than the other, and, in this way, succeed in painting a fair and compelling picture of a Western power encroaching on its Eastern satellite. Beneath the jokes, Il'f and Petrov convey a serious message to their Soviet audience, pointing out that the effect of Soviet influence on the Kazakh nomads and other native peoples in Turkestan is strong, sometimes in subtle or symbolic ways of which Soviet citizens need to be aware, and also that this effect is not ever entirely positive. Furthermore, in the decision to restrict all named characters to a ―Western‖ cast, Il'f and Petrov sidestep another pitfall of Western writing on the East; nowhere do they presume to write from the ―Oriental‖ mind or perspective. Thus, these Soviet writers do not participate in the same exoticism of their marginalized “Oriental‖ neighbors and comrades that Said and others, have identified in some American, British, and French treatments of the East. Instead, their depiction of Ostap Bender‘s experience in Turkestan identifies an important issue, calling attention to the impact that the Soviet Union has had on this developing Central Asian region.

Notes

1. Aleksandr Pushkin‘s narrative poems ―Kavkazskii plennik‖ (―The Prisoner of the Caucasus,‖ 1820-21) and ―Tsygane‖ (―Gypsies,‖ 1824, published 1827), for example, contain highly stylized Caucasian characters and settings. Lev Tolstoi, too, explored these elements in several of his works, including Kazaki (Cossacks, 1863), Kavkazskii plennik (The Prisoner


of the Caucasus, 1872), and Khadzhi-Murat (Hadji Murat, 1896–1904, pub-lished 1912).

2. In The Soviet Experiment, Ronald Grigor Suny writes: ―For most non-Russians in Russia and along its periphery a sense of nationhood that overrided and superseded local, religious, tribal, or class identities hardly existed before the revolution‖ (119). This complicated the initial process of integrating these regions into the Soviet Union, of convincing these disparate peoples, whose self-identity had not traditionally rested on any larger sense of nationhood, to identify first and foremost as citizens of the newly-formed Soviet Union. Suny notes that reformist or revolu-tionary intellectuals among non-Russians ―were torn between their eth-nic compatriots and the modernizing agenda of the Russian-led socialist revolution‖ (119). The utopian mission of Sovietization promised to improve, through social and agrarian reforms, the standard of living in these borderland areas. Ultimately, it proved convincing enough, as non-Russians increasingly fell in step behind Soviet leadership in Moscow, adopting a new attitude toward Russian leadership that reflected the new attitude in Russian leadership toward these non-Russian peoples. This makes the push for brotherhood and unification through Soviet ideology an important new dynamic to note when discussing the evolving rela-tionship between Russians and non-Russians in the twentieth century.

3. There are several examples of twentieth-century Russian and Soviet lit-erature that depict and reference Asiatic characters, cultures, and set-tings. In ―Skify‖ (―Scythians,‖ 1918) Aleksandr Blok directly addresses Russia‘s traditional role as barrier between Europe and Asia. Andrei Bely‘s novel Peterburg (1913, revised 1922) encompasses, as Victor Terras so succinctly puts it, ―all of Western European culture set against the dark, anarchic forces of Mongolianism‖ (46). In Rakovyi korpus (Cancer Ward, 1967), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells the story of a small group of cancer patients in Uzbekistan in 1955. Venedikt Erofeev‘s Moskva-Petushki (1973) draws on Persian elements, such as the tradition of Sche-herazade‘s story-telling and Saadi‘s poetry. The Stalin character in Iuz Aleshkovskii‘s Kenguru (Kangaroo, 1986) babbles about reinforcing the Russian people‘s historic victory over the Tatar Mongolian hordes and obsessively worries about the ―teeming Chinese millions‖ who will even-tually set their sights on Russian territories. And Vladimir Voinovich‘s protagonist, Vitalii Kartsev, time-travels to Moscow in the year 2042, where he learns about a terrible Buriat-Mongolian war that occurred some time in the sixty years he skipped.

4. Chingiz Aitmatov, one example of this new type of Soviet author, wrote both in Russian and in his native Kyrgyz. Several of his novels, such as I dol'she veka dlitsia den' (The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, 1980) and Plakha (The Scaffold, 1986), have been quite successful abroad and at home. Berdy Kerbabaev, perhaps the most notable Turkmen writer of


the Soviet period, published several collections of verse, essays, short stories, and children‘s literature. Soviet Uzbek author Aibek (the pen name of Musa Tashmukhamedov) published many collections of verse, which describe life in Soviet Uzbekistan. In his 1948 novel Khamza, Aibek describes the life and works of Khamza Khakimzada Niyazi, the founder of modern Uzbek literature. The Tajik author Sattor Tursunov wrote several stories that focus on the lives of Tajikstan‘s youth. Muk-htar Auezov, a prominent Soviet Kazakh author, composed more than twenty plays, reflecting the different stages of the development of social-ism in Kazakhstan. He also wrote two novels about the life and works of the founder of Kazakh literature, Abai Kunanbaev.

5. In fact, the name ―Turkestan‖ comes from the fact that Turks formed a settled population there in the early Middle Ages. Turkestan became part of the Russian Empire in the 1860s. After the Russian Revolution, the ―Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Un-ion‖ was formed. This was eventually split into the five republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these republics gained their inde-pendence (Milner-Gulland and Dejevsky 217-224).

6. Novosibirsk is also a city on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which con-nects Moscow to Vladivostok in the Far East. This connection to the Trans-Siberian made possible train travel from Turkestan to essentially any major train station in Russia.

7. Evgenii Evtushenko even mentions it in his 1961 poem of exaltation, ―Nasledniki stalina‖ (―The Heirs of Stalin,‖ 1962).

8. This is my English translation. “Переходя улицу, оглянись по сторонам. (Правила уличного движения)” (Il'f and Petrov 64).

9. This translated excerpt from the novel, and all others unless otherwise noted, are taken from Anne O. Fisher‘s translation, published in Decem-ber 2009, which is the first new English translation of the novel in over fifty years.

“Пешеходов надо любить. Пешеходы составляют большую часть человечества. Мало

того – лучшую его часть. Пешеходы создали мир. Это они построили города, возвели многоэтажные здания, провели канализацию и водопровод, замостили улицы и осветили их электрическими лампами. Это они распространили культуру по всему свету, изобрели книгопечатание, выдумали порох, перебросили мосты через реки…

И когда все было готово, когда родная планета приняла сравнительно благоустроенный вид, появились автомобилисты.

Надо заметить, что автомобиль тоже был изобретен пешеходом. Но автомобилисты об этом как-то сразу забыли. Кротких и умных пешеходов стали давить. Улицы, созданные пешеходами, перешли


во власть автомобилистов. Мостовые стали вдвое шире, тротуары сузились до размера табачной бандероли. И пешеходы стали испуганно жаться к стенам домов.

В большом городе пешеходы ведут мученическую жизнь. Для них ввели некое транспортное гетто. Им разрешают переходить улицы только на перекрестках, то есть именно в тех местах, где движение сильнее всего и где волосок, на котором обычно висит жизнь пешехода, легче всего оборвать. [...]

И только в маленьких русских городах пешехода еще уважают и любят. Там он еще является хозяином улиц, беззаботно бродит по мостовой и пересекает ее самым замысловатым образом в любом направленнии” (Il'f and Petrov 67-69).

10. Once the Turksib tracks had been completed, one team building north from the southernmost point and the other building south from the northernmost, the first trains to travel the tracks left each end of the new railroad line to meet in the middle for the commemoration in Turk-estan.

11. “Широкое поле деятельности открылось тотчас за Оренбургом, когда они увидели первого верблюда, первую юрту и первого казаха в остроконечной меховой шапке и с кнутом в руке” (Il'f and Petrov 310).

12. “Началась экзотика, корабли пустыни, вольнолюбивые сыны степей и прочее романтическое тягло” (Il'f and Petrov 310).

13. “Японский дипломат стоял в двух шагах от казаха. Оба молча смотрели лруг на друга. У них были совершенно одинаковые, чуть сплющенные лица, жесткие усы, желтая лакированная кожа и глаза, припухшие и неширокие. Они сошли бы за близнецов, если бы казах не был в бараньей шубе, подпоясанной ситцевым кушаком, а японец в сером лондонском костюме, и если бы казах не начал читать лишь в прошлом году, а японец не окончил двадцать лет назад двух университетов – в Токио и Париже. Дипломат отошел на шаг, нагнул голову к зеркалке и щелкнул затвором. Казах засмеялся, сел на своего шершавого конька и зарысил в степь” (Il'f and Petrov 310-11).

14. I am much indebted to my colleague, Oguljan Reyimbaeva, a native of Turkmenistan, for her help with unraveling the inside jokes present in Il'f and Petrov‘s use of the Turkish language.

15. ―Средне-Азиатск. ж.д.” (Il'f and Petrov 311). 16. “Давайте условимся – пошлых вещей не писать…Пошлость

отвратительна! Она ужасна!” (Il'f and Petrov 329). 17. “И по дороге в столовую корреспонденты единогласно решили не

писать об Узун-Кулаке, что значит Длинное ухо, что в свою очередь значит – степной телеграф. Об этом писали все, кто только не был на Востоке, и об этом больше невозможно читать.


Не писать очерков под названием «Легенда озера Иссык-Куль». Довольно пошлостей в восточном вкусе!” (Il'f and Petrov 329).

18. “Узун-Кулак существует, и с этим приходится считаться” (Il'f and Petrov 333).

19. This is my translation: “принять ислам и передвигаться на верблюдах” (Il'f and Petrov 340).

20. “Ледащий корабль пустыни, старавшийся увернуться от своих обязанностей… – Я Эмир-динамит, – кричал он, покачиваясь на высоком хребте. – Если через два дня мы не получим приличной пищи, я взбунтую какие-нибудь племена. Честное слово! Назначу себя уполномоченным пророка и объявлю священную войну, джихад. Например, Дании. Зачем датчане замучили своего принца Гамлета?” (Il'f and Petrov 341).

21. “В песчаных степях аравийской земли три гордые пальмы зачем-то росли” (Il'f and Petrov 342).

22. “Древний восток лежал в своих горячих гробах” (Il'f and Petrov 342). 23. “Плоские кровли, туземные оркестры, ресторанчики в восточном

вкусе, сладкие вина, легендарные девицы и сорок тысяч вертелов с шашлыками карскими, турецкими, татарскими, месопотамскими и одесскими” (Il'f and Petrov 343).

24. “Погребка «Под луной» уже не было. К удивленнию Остапа, не было даже той улицы, на которой звучали его бубны и кимвалы. Здесь шла прямая европейская улица, которая обстраивалась сразу вовсю длину. Стояли заборы, висела алебастровая пыль, и грузовики раскаляли и без того горячий воздух” (Il'f and Petrov 343).

25. “Уважай себя, Уважай нас, Уважай Кавказ, Посети нас. / Вместо этого глазам шейхов предстал картонный плакат с арабскими и русскими буквами: «Городской музей изящных исскусств’” (Il'f and Petrov 343).

26. “Юноша в ковровой бухарской тюбетейке на бритой голове” (Il'f and Petrov 345).

27. Ostranenie [остранение], sometimes translated as ―estrangement‖ or ―defamiliarization,‖ is a term that the Soviet literary critic Viktor Shklovskii used in his well-known 1917 essay, ―Iskusstvo kak priem‖ (―Art as Technique‖). This term refers to the artistic technique of forcing the audience to see something common in a new, unusual, unfamiliar, or otherwise different way, in order to enhance one‘s percep-tion of that which is familiar. Most famously, Shklovskii references Lev Tolstoi‘s horse-narrator in ―Kholstomer‖ (―Kholstomer: The Story of a Horse,‖ 1863, revised 1886) as an example of ostranenie.

28. “– Проспект имени Социализма! – сказал он, с удовольствием втягивая в себя алебастровую пыль. –Ах! Какой чудный воздух! Что здесь будет через год! Асфальт! Автобус! Институт по ирригации! Тропический институт!’ […]


– А как у вас с такими… с кабачками в азиатском роде, знаете, с тимпанами и флейтами? – нетерпеливо спросил великий комбинатор.

– Изжили, – равнодушно ответил юноша, – давно уже надо было истребить эту заразу, рассадник эпидемий. Весною как раз последний вертеп придушили. Назывался «Под луной».

– Придушили? – ахнул Корейко. – Честное слово. Но зато открыта фабрика-кухня. Европейский

стол. Тарелки моются и сушатся при помощи электричества. Кривая желудочных заболеваний резко пошла вниз.

– Что делается! – воскликнул великий комбинатор, закрывая лицо руками” (Il'f and Petrov 344).

29. “И вам не жалко этой экзотики? Ведь Багдад!” “Это для вас красиво, для приезжих, а нам тут жить приходится!” (Il'f and Petrov 345).

Works Cited Figes, Orlando. Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002. Hosking, Geoffrey. Russia: People and Empire (1552-1917). Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. Ilf, Ilya and Evgeniy Petrov. Little Golden Calf. Trans. Anne O. Fisher. Montpelier, VT: Russian Life Books, 2009. Il'f, Il'ia, and Evgenii Petrov. Zolotoi telenok. Moskva: Vagrius, 2000. Malia, Martin. The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917- 1991. New York: Free Press, 1994. Milner-Gulland, Robin and Nikolai Dejevsky. Cultural Atlas of Russia and the Former Soviet Union. New York: Checkmark Books, 1998. Ryan, Karen. Stalin is Russian Satire, 1917-1991. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2009. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Terras, Victor. Handbook of Russian Literature. New Haven: Yale UP, 1985. Zinoviev, D. ―Mysterious Turksib.‖ Mysterious Turksib. Ed. D. Zinoviev. 15 May 2010. <www.turksib.com/indexe.php>.

il'f and petrov’s zolotoi telenok: russian at the periphery, asian at...

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