The Icon and the Axe

Beneath the satirical posture of Soviet youth usually lay, however, the positive conviction that there is still work worth doing in one's private life and professional calling. If one cannot change the political and administrative system overnight, one can at least gain dignity through honorable work, free of either bureaucratic cant or political interference. Thus, humor allied itself, not only with the passion for reform that has always been feared by pretentious authority, but also with the "creeping pragmatism" of a new generation, increasingly confident that expanding islands of creative integrity can yet be dredged out of the sea of official deceit and sloth.

A typical joke of the early sixties told how a collective farmer was brought to Moscow to keep a lookout with a telescope atop Lenin Hills for the coming of the classless society. One day, en route to his sinecure, the peasant met an American, who offered to triple his salary if he would transfer to New York to watch from the Statue of Liberty for the coming of the next crisis in the capitalist system. "The terms are attractive," replies the peasant, "but I can't afford to give up a permanent job for a temporary one."

The simple hero of this tale has a rich ancestry in the popular fables and satirical literature of Great Russia; but he also has ancestors in Yiddish humor, with its idealized Peter Schlemihl and his life-affirming laughter at human foibles and pretense. This joke is, in fact, a variant of an age-old

Jewish joke about waiting for the Messiah-pointing up, perhaps, a subtle way in which the indigenous Yiddish culture of Russia seeks hidden revenge on its latest persecutor. Forced both to assimilate into the atomized society of the USSR and to endure the continuing indignities of anti-Semitism, the Jewish community continues to assert itself anonymously by providing fresh satirical resources to Russian culture as a whole.

The comic contribution of the emigrating Jewish community to the American melting pot in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century is thus being in some ways duplicated by this inner emigration and assimilation of Yiddish humor in the USSR of the mid-twentieth century. The satirical playwright who has become the posthumous idol of the young generation, Eugene Schwarz, and the man that championed the production of his works, Akimov, are both Jews. The philo-Semitism of the young generation is a mark of gratitude for the Jewish contribution to the new cultural ferment as well as an expression of new-found identity with the long-endured persecutions of Jewry. It is entirely fitting that, of all the half-heretical literary works of the post-Stalin era, Eugene Evtushenko's simple poetic tribute to Jewish suffering, "Babi Yar," should become probably the most important single symbol of fresh feeling and aspiration among the younger generation.30

The revival of Russian humor has also benefited from the increasing assimilation of other minority groups, such as the Armenians, who, like the Jews, have an age-old Near Eastern civilization, with folklore accumulated from long centuries of persecution, wandering, and commercial adventure. An imaginary "radio Armenia" is frequently cited by bemused Russians as the source of humorous comment on internal Soviet affairs. Georgians and Armenians played leading roles in developing the art of humorous and satirical folk singing in the early 1960's.

Many of the deeper, positive ideals of the new generation are expressed in the third aspect of ferment: the revival of Russian literature. In the late imperial period literature was, after all, the main medium for developing new ideas about man and society. The revival in the decade since Stalin of this search for ideas in literature is a phenomenon of great importance for Russian development (though not necessarily for world literature).31

In part, the new literature seems impressive because of the extreme sterility of that which preceded it. One is repeatedly reminded that there are no Tolstoys or Dostoevskies even in potentia. Indeed, the closest present approximation to the epic style of the former and to the psychological religious preoccupations of the latter among Soviet writers of today can be found in the novels of Michael Sholokhov and Leonid Leonov respectively: