Thaw (novel)

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Ilya Ehrenburg

Thaw (Russian Оттепель ) is a powder , an intermediate form between novel and narrative , by the Russian writer Ilja Grigorjewitsch Ehrenburg . It first appeared the year after Stalin's death, 1954, in the literary magazine Znamja (Знамя, "Banner"). The following year Ehrenburg pushed a sequel. The book signaled the beginning of the thaw period named after him , a phase of the liberalization of Soviet cultural policy and the rehabilitation of victims of the Stalinist persecution .

History of origin

Soon after the end of the Second World War, new waves of repression had begun in the Soviet Union, initiated in 1946 by Zhdanov's campaign against the “droolers of the West”, which was initially aimed primarily at writers. In 1949 the campaign against the rootless cosmopolitans followed , in the course of which almost all leading members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested and murdered, and finally in 1952 the trial of the doctors' conspiracy .

Stalin died on March 5, 1953, in April the accused of the "medical conspiracy" were acquitted, in June Lavrenti Beria was arrested. A period of uncertainty followed as to where Soviet society was headed. In the winter of that year Ehrenburg wrote his last novel, Thaw .

Thaw 1954

Action framework

Thaw takes place in the winter of 1953/1954 in a Russian provincial town "on the Volga", which is dominated by a large machine factory. The plot is reminiscent of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (this novel is also mentioned in the introduction). The focus is on the marriage of plant manager Ivan Shuravlyov, a cold-hearted bureaucrat, with the teacher Jelena Borisovna. She falls in love with the engineer Dmitri Korotenko and separates from Shuravlyov; the love story has a happy ending . Shuravlyov has postponed the already approved construction of workers' housing for years and instead made investments in production in order to be able to exceed the plan . After a spring storm has destroyed the old barracks, he is deposed as plant manager. As with Anna Karenina , this main plot is contrasted with love stories from other people: the electrical engineering student Sonja Puchowa and the engineer Savchenko as well as the doctor Vera Scherer and the chief designer Sokolowski.

There is also an artist debate, the protagonists of which are Vladimir Puchow and Saburow. Puchow, Sonja Puchowa's brother, frustrated, disoriented and often stepping forward with cynical slogans, without conviction but successfully produces commissioned work in the style of socialist realism; the impoverished Saburov paints landscapes and portraits out of inner conviction, but receives no commissions. The climax of the action is intended for the cynic Puchow, who is not granted a hopeful love story: on a spring day in the city park, he sensually experiences the thawing of emotions and finds snowdrops under the ice for the actress Tanetschka, who has just separated from him.

What drives the novel are the great events in distant Moscow, which take place beyond what is happening in the novel and are only included in the plot in their distant effects. The fall of Shuravlyov is paralleled with the end of Stalinism; Wera Scherer has to suffer from the suspicions in connection with the medical conspiracy ; Korotenko's stepfather was arrested during the Years of Great Terror and deported to the labor camp; Sokolowski's daughter lives in Belgium and Schuravljow uses this in his intrigues against him.

Narrative style and reference structure

The characters in the book are (with a few exceptions) "realistic mixtures". They are consistently shown both from the outside perspective (narrative report) and from the inside perspective ( inner monologue ), and as much as the book takes sides against the Stalinist bureaucrat Shuravlyov, he is not portrayed as a villain. He appears as an excellent engineer who is committed to intervening in the event of a fire in the plant, but is out of place as a plant manager and has character deficits.

However, three “symbolic counterpoints” are built into the rather simple story, which result in a dense network of references: The severe frost is loosening in parallel with the thawing of the frozen political and personal relationships; The political changes of de-Stalinization and the events of the Cold War are permanently present in the newspaper reading and the discussions of the characters ; and finally the novel is pervaded by a current art and literary discussion. It is not limited to the 'artist's story': allusions to numerous current novels are permanent, the book opens with a “reader debate” in the work. It is this network of references between the season, love, politics and art that made the novel possible to achieve its extraordinary effect.

Publication and Effect

The text first appeared in Znamya in April 1954 and immediately met with strong reactions. The title itself was considered dubious, as it made the Stalin era appear too negative as a period of frost; the editors of the paper would have preferred to see “renewal” or “a new phase”. In the literary magazines there were scathing reviews, including a. by Konstantin Simonow , who accused Ehrenburg of having painted a gloomy picture of socialist society. At the Second Writers' Congress of the Soviet Union in December, Mikhail Scholokhov and Alexander Surkov attacked the novel in the sharpest tones (and with anti-Semitic undertones). Publication as a book was delayed for two years. In 1963, Nikita Khrushchev personally rejected Thaw as one of the works that " illuminate the events connected with the personality cult [...] incorrectly or one-sidedly". But despite the bitter criticism, the book was a great success both in the Soviet Union and abroad, and numerous translations were published. The linguistic image of the romantic title prevailed; Ehrenburg's book signaled the beginning of the thaw period , a phase of liberalization of Soviet cultural policy and the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist persecution.

expenditure

  • Отепель. Повесть. (Thaw. Powest.) In: Snamja, No. 5, 1954.
  • Отепель. Повесть. Часть вторая (Thaw. Powest. Part Two .) In: Snamja, No. 4, 1956.
  • Отепель. Sovetsky Pisatel, Moscow 1956.
  • Thaw . Translated from Russian by Wera Rathfelder. Edited by Mimi Barillot. Berlin: Culture and Progress, 1957.
  • Thaw . In: About literature: essays, speeches, articles. Thaw, Roman. Edited, with an afterword and notes by Ralf Schröder. Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1986, pp. 229-534. ISBN 3-353-00013-5

literature

  • Karla Günther-Hielscher: Ottepel ' . In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (19 volumes), 3rd edition, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, volume 5, pp. 275–276. ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 .
  • Reinhard Lauer : Ilja Erenburg and the Russian thaw literature . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1975, ISBN 3-525-82818-7 .
  • Reinhard Lauer: Function of literature in literature. The literary allusions in Ilja Ehrenburg's novel "Ottepel '" . In: Alfred Rammelmeyer , Gerhard Giesemann (ed.): East and West . Volume 2: Essays on Slavic and Baltic philology and general linguistics . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1977, pp. 138–152, ISBN 3-515-02395-X .
  • David Schick: Thaw. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 6: Ta-Z. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2015, ISBN 978-3-476-02506-7 , pp. 43-48.
  • Ralf Schröder : Comments. Ilja Ehrenburg on literature - epochs, art program, autobiography . In: Ilja Ehrenburg: About literature, essays, speeches, articles. Thaw, Roman . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1986, pp. 537-567, ISBN 3-353-00013-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Lauer: History of Russian Literature . Munich 2000: CH Beck, ISBN 3-406-50267-9 , p. 771.
  2. ↑ Lauer: History of Russian Literature , p. 771.
  3. ↑ Marcou, p. 301, cit. n. Pravda, March 10, 1963.