Draft 2009-04-01, do not quote
Reflections in Women’s Post-Soviet Autobiographies: Individuals and
Collectives
Karin Sarsenov
Since its appearance in European aristocratic society in the sixteenth century, the mirror has
reminded its audience of at least two things. First, by objectifying the self, it facilitates
thought about the individual, and his or her inner and outward appearance. Second, by
presenting the viewer with an image which is otherwise available only to the social
community, it heightens the viewer’s awareness of the others’ gaze and of the subject’s
position within the community. The mirror aids our understanding of relations between the
individual and social group, on the one hand, and on the other – of those between different
aspects of the self.
The human mind – i.e., the simultaneous processes of thought, perception, memory,
emotion, will, imagination and the unconscious – expresses and constitutes a subject position
in spoken and written language, body language and acts. These faculties are more than often
disparate and contradictory, and a conscious effort is required to assemble them into a
coherent position, image or narrative. Jacques Lacan has famously pointed out the importance
of the mirror to the child-“homelette” in providing assistance during the initial stages of the
development of a self-identity. Through processes of identification, in which the subject uses
the flat surface of another person, i.e., the persona, as a looking-glass, a sense of coherence is
achieved between different types of social identities (such as gender, nationality, ethnicity,
class). The human ability to mirror other people’s behavior – i.e., to learn from others’
experience – is essential to the socializing process and therefore to survival.
Though the essentially fragmented character of the human mind has been experienced and
observed throughout history, the techniques of assemblage – of creating coherence – have
varied. Individualization processes are fundamental to the understanding of specific historical
periods and of geographical, cultural and socio-political areas, and have therefore attracted
keen attention from the scholarly community.
In his book The Collective and the Individual in Russia, Oleg Kharkhordin uses a
Foucauldian framework to map individualization processes in the Soviet Union, or more
specifically, “to study the set of practices that provided the conditions for the appearance and
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meaningful use in contemporary Russian life of the universal called individualism”
(Kharkhordin 1999, 33). Since Kharkhordin’s book provides necessary background for the
present study of post-Soviet autobiography, I will summarize some of its major points.
As Michel Foucault argued in the first volume of The History of Sexuality, for Western
Christianity the institution of confession played a crucial role in the individualization process.
In Russian Orthodoxy, on the other hand, public penitence served this function, at least before
the establishment of the Holy Synod in the eighteenth century. This helps account for some of
the differences between Western European and Russian/Soviet conceptions of the self. In
Western Europe, the institution of confession, in conjunction with other historical
circumstances, resulted in the ideology of individualism. According to Steven Lukes’
definition, it has four components: the intrinsic value and dignity of the individual, autonomy,
privacy, and self-development (as paraphrased in Kharkhordin 1999, 3). In Russia and the
Soviet Union, the primary value of the first three components has never been universally
accepted. Here, they have collided with ideas that originate in a holistic worldview.
It was the fourth notion of self-development, i.e., practices of self-perfection and selffashioning, however, that was instrumental for the Soviet individualization process. In
contrast to the situation in liberal democracies, the impetus for these practices differed
radically: in the Soviet Union, the state administration served as catalyst. Kharkhordin (1999,
174) demonstrates how bureaucratic techniques, such as the rescinding of party membership
due to a lack of zeal or moral inadequacy, and the collective deliberation of a member’s
“kharakteristika,” i.e., the letter of reference enclosed to applications for jobs and party
membership, helped form and also reinforced a general conception of the self as defined by
the relevant community. 1 The Catholic practice of confession suggested that an individual is
capable of understanding and defining himself through words. In Russia, on the other hand, it
fell upon the social community to characterize its members. There, it was deeds, not words,
which became the object of scrutiny.
Life writing represents one of many institutionalized practices of subjectification. It is,
however, a particularly amorphous genre: in different cultures and historical periods the lines
separating life writing from other genres, and those demarcating internal taxonomic
subdivisions are drawn differently. In Western Europe, the autobiographical genre became
emblematic for modernity’s advance, with its increasing focus on the individual and
democratization’s progress. Overviews of the autobiographical genre generally trace its
development from St. Augustine’s didactic exemplum, where individual features are erased in
deference to ecclesiastic notions of virtue. Later, we see Montaigne’s Essays, groundbreaking
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in their emphasis on individual experience, and Rousseau’s Confessions and their exploration
of a person’s inner life. Finally, the genre reaches its climax in postmodern manifestations of
a de-centered self and the genre’s complete democratization, as evidenced by the booming
trend of illness narratives and “Mis[ery] Lit[erature]” (Jolly 2001).
In Russia, on the other hand, displaying one’s inner life, inherent to the confessional types
of autobiography, was often perceived as illegitimate egoism. It also struck a discordant note
with the general culture of dissimulation, impersonation and imposture that reached its peak
during the Stalinist period, whose effects are still visible (cf. Kharkhordin 1997; Fitzpatrick
2005). Beth Holmgren (2003) demonstrates how the memoir has become the dominant
autobiographical subgenre in Russian literature for this reason. With its focus on the factual
description of historical processes, it legitimates its author’s egocentric effort with the public
task of contributing new historiographical information. The autocratic regimes that have
prevailed during Russian history have added extra urgency to this task: the pressure of
censorship and other techniques obstructing unlicensed public expression have increased
individual responsibility to produce alternative versions of historical events and processes,
able to compete with the official ones.
We have thus identified a cultural distance, nominally marked by the preference for the
term “autobiography” or “autobiographical writing” in Western European culture, and for
“memoir” or “memoir genres” in Russian culture. I believe that further light can be shed on
this “memoir culture” by investigating the rejected concept of “autobiography”. How has this
term, with its blatant focus on the individual, been assimilated in a culture where this focus
appears suspicious? An investigation of both normative definitions and the actual use of this
uncomfortable term should uncover the background against which current autobiographical
discourse becomes intelligible, while providing insights into the contemporary relationship
between individuals and collectives.
In Soviet-era literary reference works, one senses a certain unease in the discussions of
autobiography. It is, after all, a genre that presupposes a multitude of separate and potentially
conflicting subject positions standing in sharp contrast to the monolithic culture of high
Stalinism, for example. This unease was especially prominent during the first three decades of
Soviet rule: without exception, the attitude towards the term “autobiography” was strikingly
negative. In the Literary Encyclopedia: A Dictionary of Literary Terms, E. Lunin (1925,
columns 11-14) dismisses the autobiography proper as an artless description of the author’s
private life, and then devotes the rest of the article to autobiographical elements in fictional
prose and lyric poetry. In the eleven-volume Literary Encyclopedia published in the years
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1929-1939, “autobiography” is not even given a separate entry. Instead, comments about this
genre are relegated to the entry titled “memoir genres.” In the space of a paragraph,
autobiography is defined by its focus on the individual, and the fact that it is written “for
special reasons.” The examples of such “special reasons” that follow refer exclusively to
canonical writers of fiction who write autobiographies in order to document their creative
development, from which we infer that the focus on the individual is legitimated by the
author’s artistic genius alone (Kulle et al. 1934, columns 131-149).
After de-Stalinization, the ideological climate moved towards a limited pluralism as far as
scientific approaches and theories were concerned. In Short Literary Encyclopedia (Surkov
1962-1978, 70), the genre’s Western European origins are emphasized by the fact that only
two Russian authors are included in the long list outlining the genre’s historical development
– the nineteenth-century writers A. I. Herzen and B.G. Korolenko. By implication, important
earlier Russian works such as Avvakum’s Life (the autobiography of this seventeenth-century
Old Believer archpriest) and Nadezhda Durova’s The Cavalry Maid (1836) are thereby placed
outside the genre, refuting the possibility that a native autobiographical tradition existed. The
implication remained that those “special reasons” for writing autobiographies necessarily
entailed recognized genius, or at least public prominence. However, the list of possible
occupations for autobiographers is expanded to include not only authors of fiction, but also
composers, directors, scientists and revolutionaries. In the final Soviet encyclopedia, Literary
Encyclopedic Dictionary (Kozhevnikov & Nikolaev 1987), those ideological traces have
diminished: the entry is based primarily on Western theoretical works on the genre, and it
emphases the genre’s amorphousness, such as the impossibility of drawing a sharp distinction
between autobiography and memoir, for instance.
In a recent post-Soviet encyclopedia, Literary Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts
(Nikoliukin 2003), autobiography in a broad sense is defined as to include reminiscences,
memoirs, notes, confessions, diaries, notebooks, dialogues and anecdotes — i.e., what the
encyclopedia of 1934 preferred to call “memoir genres,” and what in English would be
referred to as “autobiographical writing” or “life writing.” Here the development of a Russian
autobiographical tradition is outlined, starting with Avvakum’s Life (ca. 1673), and covering a
large number of works that had been banned or were otherwise unpublishable in the Soviet
Union (such as Boris Pasternak’s Safe Conduct, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Oak and the
Calf ). Notably, only fiction writers are mentioned in the entry, despite the fact that the postSoviet era has witnessed a boom in celebrity autobiography.
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However, the tendency to avoid the term “autobiography” is still apparent: in a web-based
encyclopedia by the prominent academician P. A. Nikolaev (2004), the term is not mentioned
at all, replaced by entries on “documentary literature,” “memoirs,” “diaries,” and
“correspondence.” This continuing avoidance of the term “autobiography” indicates that the
ideological preconceptions underlying the genre are to a certain extent still subject to
depreciation, at least within the area of literary criticism.
To sum up: in Russian and Soviet literary reference works, autobiography is understood
primarily as one of many subgenres which claim documentary value. It differs from other
such genres in that it focuses on the individual, i.e., provides the individual with an
opportunity for self-definition. This circumstance necessarily accords it a marginal position in
a cultural context, which normally awards this right to the social community, and more
specifically to the Communist party. Autobiography therefore appears as an exception
reserved for established practitioners of creative professions, primarily fiction writers. Here, it
serves the auxiliary task of providing a key to the interpretation of the (great) writer’s fictional
work. The right to speak from the subject position of a writer, composer or revolutionary is
based upon the Marxist-Leninist idea of the extraordinary individual, sprung from the masses,
whose talent functions as evidence of his or her organic connection with the creative power of
the collective.
This understanding of the genre is also apparent in library cataloguing practices. The way
works are classified in the subject field have changed little since Soviet times, and it is still
possible to find remnants of Marxist-Leninist historiography in the designation of time
periods, for instance, such as “The period of mature socialism and the construction of
communism (1959-March 1985).” The Russian State Library uses “autobiographies, diaries,
reminiscences” as a fixed phrase in the subject field, and routinely adds information on the
writer’s profession (“pianist,” “actress”) in order to indicate the “special reason” legitimizing
the autobiography’s publication. Works by established fiction writers are often specifically
identified by the fixed phrase “writer’s autobiographies, diaries, reminiscences.”
Importantly, the term “autobiography” or “autobiographical” in titles by fiction writers
has a slightly different meaning than in works written by authors from other professions,
depending on the difference between the contextual frames (on frames, see Saeed 2003, 37f).
If the term “autobiography” appears in the title of a book by a ballet dancer, for instance, for
whom self writing is the only literary endeavor directly associated with her profession, the
word is situated in a “self-writing frame,” containing all possible subgenres of self writing,
such as “memoir” or “reminiscences.” Since “autobiography,” not “memoir” was picked, the
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primary signification of “autobiography” in this context is to signal a deliberate choice to
focus on the author and her creative and personal development, rather than, for example,
important people of her acquaintance, or the development of the Russian ballet - then
“memoir” or “reminiscences” would have been the first choice. When situated within a lifewriting frame, “autobiography” primarily denotes “me, not the social community.”
In the case of fiction writers, “autobiography” is applied within a larger “literature frame,”
since writers potentially master a wide range of literary genres, not just the autodocumentary
ones. Here, the use of the term serves to distinguish this specific work from the bulk of
fictional writings already produced. In addition to indicating a focus on the author,
“autobiography” in this context suggests the work makes claims to truthful depiction, in
contrast to his or her fiction writing. Therefore the use of the term in this context primarily
signals “facts, not fiction.” If phrased in semantic terminology, we could say that the word
“autobiography” includes the following semantic components:
1. [topic=author]
2. [factual]
Depending on the extra-linguistic context, component (1) or (2) will be the one primarily
actualized and the meaning of the word will change accordingly.
A third and very different denotation of “autobiography” in Russian relates to the
sometimes very detailed life descriptions Soviet citizens had to produce when entering
educational institutions, medical facilities, employment and party organizations. This was an
extremely formalized genre which aligned a person’s biography to official ideological
standards. Elena Zdravomyslova (2000, 212) regards autobiographies as “imposed life-stories,
which the informants used in their public self-presentations”. The document consisted of a
questionnaire, to which an “autobiography, written in your own hand” was to be appended.
This practice of constituting the self was particularly frightening during the Stalinist period,
when the wrong answer to questions like “Were you ever taken prisoner during the Great
Patriotic War?” and “Did you ever hesitate regarding the realization of Party policy?” could
have fatal consequences. The questionnaires of the late Soviet period are less intrusive, when
it was primarily question no. 5, “nationality,” posing a problem to the Jewish population, and
no. 17, “Party penalties,” which blocked the careers of unfaithful husbands and participants in
public brawls.
We have now established that the word “autobiography” is polysemous in the Soviet and
post-Soviet cultural context: it has (at least) three different, but related senses: 1) the life
writing of noteworthy individuals, legitimated and most often solicited by the collective; 2)
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the documentary life writing of fiction writers; and 3) the Soviet equivalent of a Curriculum
Vitae. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many of the factors behind this concept of
autobiography have vanished or changed. There has been a decline of the influence of
Marxist-Leninist ideology, for example, privileging the masses at the individual’s expense.
The practice of maintaining detailed personal files, in which political views are documented,
based on self-submitted autobiographies has been abandoned in most sectors of society.
However, the inevitable inertia in genre development must be considered (cf. Balina 2003,
187 on “genre memory”), as well as the conservative nature of this particular genre.
Autobiographies are after all usually written by elderly authors who often still adhere to
norms and values acquired during their youth. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that
when authors or publishing houses choose to include “autobiography” or “autobiographical”
in the title of a work, they allude to one of these three senses – whether seriously or in jest.
We can now turn our attention to how this term is actually used. If we understand
“autobiography” as a discursive practice, producing subject positions that allow the
constitution of legitimate selves, discovering just what kind of subject positions these are is of
interest. Marianne Liljeström (2004) has done a study on Soviet women’s autobiographical
texts with this aim. She demonstrates how women with diametrically opposed relationships to
the Soviet power – those who participated in the revolutionary struggle and those who fell
victim to Stalin’s repression – were united in their efforts to take advantage of the genre’s
authority to open a space for women subjects in the public sphere. In these texts, she identifies
a number of ritualized narrative practices that are instrumental in creating legitimate public
positions. As an historian, Liljeström is not concerned with the cultural divide regarding
attribution of genre, and thus uses texts with various genre denominations as her sources (such
as memoirs and reminiscences). While Liljeström uses a content-based method, of interest
here are the practices of genre attribution, as well as what kind of subject positions the term
“autobiography” generates.
Methodology
For the post-Soviet period, the current study used the electronic catalogues of National
Library of Russia and Russian State Library, complemented by the electronic version of the
National Bibliography kept by the Russian Book Chamber, and finally Worldcat. Clearly,
these catalogues cannot generate a complete list of published autobiographies: first, because
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of the amorphousness of the genre, librarians understandably hesitate to attribute rigid
classifications to individual works, as evidenced by the use of the compound phrase
“autobiographies, reminiscences, notes” in the subject field. We are therefore restricted to
dealing with works whose titles explicitly declare their genre affiliation. This definition of
autobiography thus requires that the author, an editor or the publishing house has chosen to
categorize the work as such. Admittedly, this is the narrowest definition possible: most works
routinely referred to as “the autobiography of X” are not labeled in this way (cf.
aforementioned Pasternak’s Safe Conduct and Solzhenitsyn’s The Oak and the Calf).
However, this suits our aims, since “autobiography” is understood here in the nominal sense
of a concept that is capable of creating a system of interrelated subject and object positions.
Second, the two Russian national libraries’ collections are far from complete: when the
publishing trade reorganized after 1991, there was no longer any incentive for delivering the
obligatory copy. As a result, the Russian Book Chamber estimates that it received only 4045% of the published materials during the years 1991-1993. Since then, that percentage has
increased, and is now estimated to be 80% (Dzhigo 2004, 4f). In spite of these and many other
complications, a combined search of the four catalogues is likely to provide a fairly
representative picture of post-Soviet Russian writing that has been labeled as
autobiographical.
In these databases, searches have been conducted for entries containing the word
“autobiography” (or derivations of it) in the title field. The search was limited to works
published during the years 1991-2008 by Russian-speaking authors in the Russian language,
i.e., no translations are included. 2 Since individual subject positions were the focus, works
with collective authorship, such as anthologies, were excluded. The search resulted in 422
unique titles for the period, allowing one to conclude that works with the label
“autobiography” constitute only a fraction of all self writing published. A cursory search in
the Russian State Library catalogue for the related terms “memoir,” “reminiscences,” and
“notes” generates over 31,000 matches for the same period. Due to reprints of earlier, often
classical works, one third of the 422 autobiographies are titles by non-contemporary authors. 3
How thus has the term “autobiography,” with its blatant focus on the individual, been
assimilated in a culture that views such a focus with suspicion? The preliminary answer
clearly is – “not smoothly.”
Information about authors’ professions has been added to the entries in this corpus of selfacclaimed autobiographies, i.e., the “special reason” or subject position that legitimates the
work. This information has been extracted from the catalogue entries: in most cases this
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position is stated rather unambiguously, either in the subject or title field, cf. Ispoved’
kulatskogo syna: Avtobiograficheskaia povest’ (The Confession of a Kulak’s Son: An
Autobiographical Story) or Sud’ba. Epokha: avtobiografiia istorika (Fate. Epoch: The
Autobiography of an Historian). Entries without such information, but whose authors also had
published works of fiction, were listed as “writer.” The different designations of professions
were grouped into sixteen larger units (see tables below), in which for example “trumpeters,”
“pianists” and “composers” were united into a larger group titled “musicians.” The data was
then sorted according to the number of titles in each group, and divided according to the
gender of the author.
Data has also been collected on print-runs. However, approximately 30% of the entries in
the catalogues lacked this information. As a result, no statistically viable figures could be
calculated regarding the average print run for each professional group. It is, however, possible
to distinguish some general trends. The single most printed autobiography is Ivan Shmelev’s
(1873-1950) Leto Gospodne: Avtobiograficheskie povestvovaniia (The Lord’s Year:
Autobiographical Narratives), which has been reprinted over thirty times during the period,
having a total print-run of more than 500,000 copies. This book’s leading position is
explained by the fact that it is included in the secondary school curriculum (Biriukova &
Khairullin 2007,495; Polubinskaia 2008,88). Other titles with a print-run of 100,000 copies or
more were almost exclusively published in 1991-1992, i.e., while the publishing boom of late
Perestroika was still in effect. Autobiographies by writers, politicians and actors are generally
printed in generous proportions, while books with small print-runs were most often written by
scientists and professionals (for example physicians, aircraft designers, lawyers).
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Results
Tab. 1. Male authors
Profession
Number
of titles
Share
within M
group
Writer
Scientist, scholar
Military, participant in Great Patriotic War
Politician, official within state administration
Professional
No data
Musician
Church official
Victim of repression
Artist
Journalist
Actor
Film/theater director
Sportsman
Farmer
Relative of famous person
169
55
23
16
16
13
12
12
9
7
7
4
3
3
1
0
48%
16%
7%
5%
5%
4%
3%
3%
3%
2%
2%
1%
1%
1%
0%
0%
Total
350
Tab. 2. Female authors
Profession
Number
of titles
Share
within F
group
Writer
Scientist, scholar
Professional
Relative of famous person
Church official
Actress
Film/theater director
Politician, official within state administration
No data
Musician
Artist
Military, participant in Great Patriotic War
Victim of repression
40
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
56%
7%
7%
7%
6%
4%
3%
3%
3%
1%
1%
1%
1%
10
Total
72
Tab. 3. Male and female authors
Profession
Total
number
of titles
Share
Writer
Scientist, scholar
Military, participant in Great Patriotic War
Professional
Politician, official within state administration
Church official
No data
Musician
Victim of repression
Artist
Actor
Journalist
Film/theater director
Relative of famous person
Sportsman
Farmer
209
60
24
21
18
16
15
13
10
8
7
7
5
5
3
1
50%
14%
6%
5%
4%
4%
4%
3%
2%
2%
2%
2%
1%
1%
1%
0%
Total
422
Share titles by women:
Share titles by men
17%
83%
The most striking result of this study is the rarity of titles written by women: they constitute
only 17% of the total. It is generally assumed that Russian literature is becoming increasingly
feminized, an assumption based primarily on the extremely high print-runs seen in women’s
crime fiction. As data shows, however, this feminization has clearly not affected the more
prestigious realm of autobiography. Women’s position as speaking subjects in
autobiographical discourse must therefore be considered marginal, in spite of the progress
made by revolutionaries, documented by Liljeström. Another indication of this marginal
position is the fact the category “relative of famous person,” i.e., suggesting more will be said
about this relative than the autobiographical subject per se, is inhabited exclusively by female
authors, writing about male relatives.
As the literary reference works prescribed, the genre is dominated by fiction writers, who
contributed half of the material. Other categories with a relatively high number of titles are
scientists, scholars, military men and politicians. These are professions within the purview of
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the state, characterized by strict hierarchy and formalized systems for signification of
excellence. Authors within these categories therefore tend to have material evidence (for
example medals, degrees, titles), confirming the collective’s attribution of noteworthy status.
The proportionately large number of autobiographies written by persons with a high degree of
institutional power indicates a tendency to reserve this term for the constitution of selves,
previously defined by their position in a professional hierarchy.
To understand better how these figures on autobiography relate to normative conceptions
of self-writing in Russian “memoir-culture,” comparing them to series of memoirs published
during the same period is useful. One of the most prestigious and ambitious is Vagrius’s
series “Moi 20 vek,” ‘(“My Twentieth Century”). Since 1997, some 140 volumes have been
published, by both Russian and foreign authors. The series’ contents are a result of careful
selection, and reflect the publishing house’s idea of both representativeness and marketability.
We may therefore assume that books published as part of this series can tell us something
about what kind of authors are “entitled” to write memoirs in the context of post-Soviet
culture, even if the idiosyncratic strategies of a particular publishing house must be taken into
account.
The composition of the series reflects its ambition of illuminating twentieth century
Russia from as many angles as possible. The list of authors includes early rivals to Bolshevik
power (Aleksandr Kerenskii, Boris Savinkov), as well as prominent communists (Lev
Trotskii, Nikita Khrushchev) and Soviet dissidents (Aleksandr Zinov’ev). In the area of
culture and entertainment, representatives of high cultural forms such as opera (Galina
Vishnevskaia) and dramatic theatre (Alisa Koonen) are included alongside performers of
romantic song (Leonid Utesov) and directors of popular cinema (El’dar Riazanov). Tat’iana
Okunevskaia’s memoir Tat’ianin den’ (Tat’iana’s Day) is emblematic in this respect: her life
story focuses on her enormous success in wartime cinema, thanks largely to her sex appeal,
her glamorous life and close relations with the political elite, and, finally, her six years of
labor camps due to her unwary outspokenness and her status as the daughter of an “enemy of
the people.” Apart from a striving for representativeness, the list of “My Twentieth Century”
authors also reveals an aspiration to confirm a positive national identity. Traditional areas of
Russian/Soviet prominence are well covered: literature, ballet, space travel and the circus.
When this body of works was subjected to the same sorting procedures as described
above, some interesting differences from the autobiographical corpus appeared. In Vagrius’s
series, fiction writers still constitute the largest group, but they comprise barely a third of the
corpus. In the second most numerous group, actors make up a fifth of the material – a group
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which held an only marginal position among autobiographies (2%). When this memoir corpus
is divided according to gender, the difference is even more remarkable. The general frequency
of female authors is approximately the same as within the autobiographical corpus, yet within
the group of female authors, the distribution of professions is very different. Within the
autobiographical corpus, writers comprised a little more than half the female material, while
other professions were represented by single entries. Among memoirs, actresses occupy the
equivalent position: surprisingly, while actresses authored twelve of the twenty three books
written by women, only three fiction writers (Zinaida Gippius, Nadezhda Teffi and Marina
Tsvetaeva) were selected.
Why then is it so, that women’s self writing in the interpretation of Vagrius editors focus
on actresses, while the self-acclaimed autobiographies are dominated by fiction writers? A
closer look at the titles of women’s autobiographies might shed some light on this question.
Among 72 titles by women authors a majority (66%) combine the attribute “autobiographical”
with a noun that indicates that they belong to a fictional genre, as for example
“autobiographical story” (‘povest’,’ 24 titles), “autobiographical prose” (‘proza’, 22 titles),
“autobiographical novel” (‘roman,’ 2 titles). Among male authors, such fictionalized titles
were used by little more than a third.
As fiction is the domain of more or less established writers, these titles allude mainly to
the second sense of “autobiography” as identified above – the documentary life writing by a
fiction writer, as opposed to his or her purely fictional works. As the noun consists of the
semantic component [fictional] and is only qualified by the attribute “autobiographical,”
containing the component [factual], such titles signal a primary affiliation with the fictional
genre, though they include factual elements. They also indicate that the texts rely primarily on
their literary qualities, rather than on their authors’ celebrity status. This means that the
female corpus to a large extent is made up of works that signal an extreme dissociation from
the memoir-series: if the latter demands that its author show historical accuracy and a
recognized public position, the publication of an “autobiographical story” allows for poetic
freedom and any claim to public prominence is optional.
In the autobiographic corpus, the use of titles indicating affiliation to fictional genres is
not limited to established fiction writers. When renowned directors (Natalia Sats) and
actresses (Alla Demidova) label their texts “autobiographical prose,” despite the fact that they
obviously rely on their celebrity status rather than their literary reputation, this indicates the
claims to truth are being lowered as the space for poetic freedom is being increased. The
attribution of such a title thus makes the act of publishing autobiographical material appear
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less pretentious. The dominance of fiction writers in the female corpus may therefore be
interpreted as a sign of subscription to E. Lunin’s opinion on autobiography, with its focus on
autobiographical elements in fictional prose and lyric poetry. It can also be seen as an
indication of a general reluctance among women authors to publish their life stories under
titles that would more explicitly lay claim to public prominence. As for the documented
frequency of actresses in the female memoir corpus, it opens up interesting fields of inquiry,
regarding questions of marketability, desire and identification processes. 4
To sum up: the practices of publishing houses and libraries in terms of institutional
attribution of the generic term “autobiography” or “autobiographical” allow us to make the
following statements: 1) the subject positions generated by the term are predominately of
male gender; and 2) the term favors subject positions within institutionalized hierarchies, such
as the academic world, the military and the area of state governance. Compared to show
business, for instance, these areas are carefully regulated and the claim to public prominence,
which might accompany the publishing of an autobiography, is fairly easily substantiated with
proper documents. This result points to a background structure that does not encourage self
appointed claims to public attention within such a prestigious and conservative field as
literature. The individual focus of the genre obviously seems problematic, and this focus still
needs sanction from the relevant collective. 3) While the term “autobiography” in the
Russian/Soviet context may denote “life writing by an extraordinary individual,” a rival
meaning of the term, and especially of its adjectival derivations, is “documentary self writing
by a fiction writer.” This sense was the one to which many titles appealed. Among women’s
autobiographies, the use of fictionalized titles such as “autobiographical story” dominates, and
it is frequently used by those who are not established fiction writers. The strategy of
fictionalizing autobiographic titles amounts to a public act rather different than the one
implied in publishing an autobiography proper. It softens the focus on the individual, and the
fact that it allows for fictional elements takes the edge off of any provocative statement that
might be included in the text.
Having covered the subject of autobiography in the nominal sense, we now proceed to the
actual texts. In the material collected, Alla Demidova’s autobiographies are positioned at the
very point where all the tendencies documented above intersect: her work appears in the
autobiographical corpus as well as in Vagrius memoir series, she belongs to the
overrepresented profession of the actress, and uses a fictionalized title when publishing her
most elaborated autobiographical work: Begushchaia stroka pamiati: Avtobiograficheskaia
proza, (The Flying Line of Memory: Autobiographical Prose, 2000). To date, she has
14
published eight books, all of them based on her experience as an actress, five of which are
explicitly autobiographical. 5 The autobiographical works show a great degree of overlap,
specific chapters and passages recur in several books. When the texts are read in succession, it
is as if we are witnessing an ongoing editorial process, with a continual shifting of emphasis.
Alla Demidova experienced late Soviet culture as its varnish of Marxist-Leninist state
ideology was quickly eroding. She was also a frequent traveler to Western Europe during this
period, providing her ample opportunity to reflect on the relation between the individual and
society, the constitution of the self, and the formation of national, social, professional and
other identities. These questions are also central to her autobiographical works. Her choice of
mirror metaphors when searching for adequate titles should come as no surprise: “I love
mirrors. But my relationship to the mirror is mystical. […] Every actor takes a look in the
mirror before entering the stage, not – ’how do I look?’ but with a purely subconscious
curiosity – it is not he, but a phantom being reflected. The actor must visualize this phantom
while acting. Therefore a mirror is encoded in all titles of my books, in one way or another
(Demidova 2000, 14f). 6
The mirror’s emblematic significance for the acting profession, referring to the creative
process of impersonation, is not the only reason for encoding mirror in the book titles.
Another is Demidova’s involvement in Andrei Tarkovsky’s autobiographical film “The
Mirror,” which is mentioned in every autobiographical work of hers. Above all, however,
Demidova’s texts are profoundly self-reflective: before setting out on her autobiographical
endeavor in The Flying Line of Memory, which as the title suggests involves memory work,
she devotes an entire chapter to the subject of “the characteristics of memory,” in which she
reflects on the mechanisms of remembering. Here, she also outlines the limitations of the
remembering subject: “…Fate has offered me meetings with many people, but my egoistic
memory has fixed only that which concerns me. You often condemn people who write ‘Me
and…’ But how could you write differently? Obviously, it is me writing, therefore – ‘me and
N.’ Theater or literary scholars will recreate people’s portraits, without even knowing them
well. That is however something very different. When you know a person well, he turns to
you, showing only that part of him that he wants to show. For instance, Vysotskii was very
multi-faceted, but to me he showed the same side all the time. Therefore some of my
reminiscences appear one-sided and short (10).
This is a key passage in Demidova’s autobiographical project. Here, she describes how
she navigates the pitfalls of the genre of self writing in the Soviet/Russian context, with its
highly ideologized perception of the self/collective relationship. On the one hand, the sharing
15
of intimate details characteristic of Western European and some post-Soviet autobiography
makes her uneasy, not surprisingly, considering she was raised in postwar Soviet Union with
its culture of denunciations and strict social control. “And, furthermore… is it absolutely
necessary to be outspoken about everything in life? ‘If only you knew from what rubbish
poetry grows, knowing no shame…’ – but is it necessary to wash this dirty linen in public?”
(15). 7 Consequently there is little or no mention of her relations to parents, her husband,
possible lovers or children. On the other hand, concentrating exclusively on safe subjects such
as her theater entourage would dissociate the text from the autobiographical genre entirely.
The solution is to write the self as it is reflected in other people, creating portraits that
focus on the relationship between the self and the other, documenting which specific facets of
herself she revealed to different people. Among the 52 chapters in The Flying Line of
Memory, fourteen is specifically devoted to important people she knew, such as Andrei
Tarkovskii, Innokentii Smoktunovskii, Sergei Paradzhanov, and Larisa Shepit’ko. However,
she strictly follows the method outlined in her introduction, and the structure of the chapter on
Paradzhanov, for example, is based on an enumeration of the different outlandish gifts he
gave to her. In this manner, by explicitly dealing with Paradzhanov, she implicitly conveys
elaborate information on her own personality and the nature of the relationships she was able
to build.
The very need to navigate between these pitfalls is nevertheless something she
depreciates. Soviet ideology is another focus of her attention – proclaiming the rule of the
masses, the underprivileging of outstanding individuals, and the difficulties of cultivating a
viable self in such a repressive environment. “[…] the intelligentsia in our Soviet system
could not afford the luxury of confession in art. We kept our thoughts and feelings to
ourselves and, in this battle with the system, perhaps we lost ourselves” (292). She notes the
resulting “dependence on other people’s opinions” (168), and protests against the notion that
“if we are not from the crowd, then we are not of interest” (307). The Soviet tendency to view
the self as constituted in the eyes of the relevant community, as documented by Kharkhordin,
is here lamented as an obstacle to creative development. 8
Consequently, she is concerned with a normative discussion on the ideal self, which she
summarizes in the idea of “intelligentnost’,” i.e. the quality that unites the members of the
intelligentsia. Interestingly, she understands this quality as something preceding and
conditioning personality: “For me, the concept of “intelligentnost’” means a special quality of
the soul. “Intelligentnost’” is not hereditary; it is not conditioned by profession and is not
acquired by education. It is a mode of perceiving the world. […] Il’ia Averbakh was an
16
absolute “intelligent.” In all his acts, in his work, in his relations to people the quality we call
culture was revealed, i.e., what has been accumulated by society during many centuries. This
determined his thoughts, feelings, his human dignity, his capacity for understanding others,
the inner richness of his personality, the level of his ethical and aesthetical development and
the constant self-improvement of his soul” (226).
An analysis of this passage reveals a polemic with the standard scientific view of
personality: her way of exemplifying “intelligentnost’” by way of the psychological make up
of the director Il’ia Averbakh in all respects describes dimensions of personality that current
psychological research claims are both hereditary and possible to acquire in a suiting social
environment, for instance through education. By constructing “intelligentnost’” as something
beyond genetics and social adaptation, this quality acquires religious or at least metaphysical
dimensions in her understanding. 9
A second property of this ideal self is “estestvennost’,” the quality of being natural,
guileless. Demidova outlines this concept using a dipartite model of the self, where one
surface should correspond to the other. Again, the metaphor of the mirror appears: “It is
important to find the precise address, for whom you are playing a role, in the same way as it is
important to know for whom you write a book, a review or make a film… (For yourself? For
the person you see in the mirror? It turns out that these are two different characters)” (75). In a
chapter devoted to this subject, the idea of naturalness is closely connected to the capacity to
conform to social conventions, to perform in a manner that is intelligible to others, rather than
straightforwardly expressing a presumed prediscursive self. Naturalness is of course a key
issue to her profession – this is the purpose of every effort to impersonate. However,
Demidova applies the idea of correspondence between surfaces universally: “naturalness in
both art and life – this is a sort of heightened artistry” (156). Again, the self is constructed in
relation to other people, and in relation to different dimensions of the self. 10
The most important function of the mirror in Demidova’s texts, however, is its
metaphorical use in the conceptualization of fictionality. Paraphrasing a Chinese legend about
the existence of an independent world beyond the mirror, which only by way of punishment is
forced to reflect the physical world, she constitutes art as something both autonomous and
metaphysical (118). In response to Leninist clichés such as Leo Tolstoy’s work being the
“mirror of the 1905 revolution” 11 and the socialist realist dogma’s reverence to the “reality”,
she advances the idea of the inherent otherness of art, as the independent world beyond the
mirror: “True art is never an impassive mirror. The power and richness of ‘the second reality’
is located in its multiple extensions and dimensions, the synthesis of all the features that are
17
scattered throughout life, seemingly without any deep inherent connection. Art discloses these
connections, finds them and creates its own reality. The magic of art lies in the submersion in
something that is radically different from everyday life” (119). This romantic view of art and
the artistic self is obviously characteristic of her generation in general, the “shestidesiatniki.”
However, by inserting the mirror as an overarching principle of her work - as instrumental in
her understanding of art, in her portrayal of the self through its reflection in others, in her
understanding of the self’s different dimensions and their relations - the resulting world view
acquires an exactness and inherent coherence that is not generally associated with this
generation of “dreamers.”
Demidova’s autobiographical work demonstrates an explicit commitment to the four
elements of individualism, mentioned here in the beginning: the intrinsic value and dignity of
the individual, autonomy, privacy and self-development. Demidova refers to dignity and selfdevelopment in connection to “intelligentnost’,” and her esteem for autonomy is implied in
her regret regarding the prevailing dependence on the opinion of others. Finally, her
eschewment of all intimate detail speaks to her profound allegiance to the value of privacy.
However, the idea of the self as constituted in the eyes of the relevant community is also very
much present in the great attention she pays to her colleagues, and the care with which she has
selected them. By combining collectivist and individualist approaches, Demidova attains that
air of aristocratic moderateness, which also distinguishes her cinematic and dramatic persona.
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1
A typical reference from the 1950’s would include passages such as “Comrade N.N. has been a member of the
Komsomol since 1943 and has been registered in the Komsomol organization of the Kirov factory since 1950
until the present. During this period comrade X has proven herself to be a disciplined and exemplary Komsomol
member. Comrade N.N. works on herself a great deal, improving her professional and political skills. In her
personal life comrade N.N. is modest.” (Quotes from a reference from a family archive in possession of the
author, K.S.) The frequent use of these “kharakteristika” in everyday life made them a popular target of allusions
and ridicule in late Soviet culture. In the block buster TV-series “Seventeen Moments of Spring” (1973), set in
Germany 1945, all German protagonists are introduced by way of a still, showing an excerpt from the personal
files of the German security service. For Soviet citizens, the association to the native KGB and party files was a
quick one. Here is one example: “Reference on Walther Schellenberg, member of the Nazi Party since 1933,
Brigadefuhrer of the SS, Chief of the 6th Dept. of the Reich Security (political intelligence). A true Aryan. Of
Nordic character, brave and firm. Open, sociable and friendly with friends and colleagues. Merciless towards the
Reich’s enemies. An excellent family man. His wife’s candidature approved by the SS Reichsfuhrer. No
discrediting liaisons. A splendid sportsman. Proved an outstanding organizer of work.” (Translations as per
English subtitles). This way of introducing characters was taken one step further in the semi-animated film
“Treasure Island” (1988). Here the disheveled population of Stevenson’s adventure pops up in excerpts from
criminal files, complete with mug shots, receiving characterizations such as “Blind Pew. Old pirate, friend of
Flint’s. Greedy, can do anything for money. Vile character. Not married.” (Translation by the author, K.S.)
2
The search was conducted in January 2009, i.e., at a point when the libraries presumably had not finished
cataloguing all the titles from 2008. A search conducted at a later date will therefore generate a larger number of
titles.
3
For the purposes of this study, the definition of “non-contemporary” is understood as “deceased prior to 1991.”
20
4
Marina Balina (2008) explains the post-Soviet boom of actors’ memoirs by noting how these texts appeal to the
readers’ visual memory.
5
Her list of publications includes the following works: Vtoraia real’nost’ (1980), “A skazhite, Innokentii
Mikhailovich…”, Razgovor s Innokentiem Smoktunovskim vedet Alla Demidova (1988), Vladimir Vysotskii, kak
ia ego znaiu i liubliu (1989), Teni zazerkal’ia. Rol’ aktera: tema zhizni i tvorchestva (1983), Begushchaia stroka
pamiati (2000, 2003), Akhmatovskie zerkala: akterskie zametki (2004), Zapolniaia pauzu (2007), V glubine
zerkal (2008). The contents of Zapolniaia pauzu are identical to those of Begushchaia stroka pamiati.
6
Here and elsewhere translations by the author (K.S). From now on, page numbers within parentheses refer to
Begushchaia stroka pamiati, 2000.
7
Internal quote from Anna Akhmatova’s poem “I don’t need martial hosts arrayed in odes…” (Akhmatova 1997,
413).
8
Elena Koreneva, a star of Soviet cinema of the 1970’s, makes a similar reflection in her “novel-biography”
Idiotka (2003, 320ff), describing her experience as an émigré in the United States: “A sudden change occurred in
my awareness of how suppressed I was when a student, dressed exactly as me, sat down in front of me during a
lecture: a blue pull-over and a neat white collar. The similarities were many: the silent presence at the lectures,
the deeply hidden “inner world,” straight posture while seated. This was a student from the People’s Republic of
China. He turned out to be my own reflection in the mirror. This convinced me that our inner condition affects
how we move and how we dress. Total control over my behavior and an orientation towards the opinion of
others – that’s what my appearance signaled. […] I kept silent, because I understood that I had no opinion of my
own, it was not formed yet, I could declare something, but I could not argue. We had always been in the
company of “our circle,” where unanimity reigned with regard to the system, the GULAG, Sakharov, dissidents,
bureaucracy and censorship. […] I had never had to say something from my own subject position. My ‘I’ was
always ‘we’.
9
Women autobiographers rather frequently discuss the concept of “intelligentnost’.” Political scientist Vera
Pirozhkova (b. 1921) considers the legacy of the intelligentsia “pernicious,” entailing an “inner weakness of
creative faculties” (2002, 1). Tat’iana Okunevskaia (1914-2002) continues on a similar note (1998, 172): “Why
can’t I tell a person right in his face what I think about him?! Decaying intelligentsia! [Intelligentskaia gnil’] As
Dad said, I come out with God knows what in front of superiors, when I’d better keep silent, but I can’t bring
myself to tell off an insignificant person, although he’s a scoundrel.” These judgments echo the ferocious
denunciation of the intelligentsia as a class characteristic of the early Soviet period, to which Demidova objects.
21
10
Such a relational understanding of the self is subject to an intense scholarly debate within sociology, where
this model competes with the more autonomous or fluid conceptions proposed by Anthony Giddens and
Zygmunt Bauman. For an overview, see Mason (2004).
11
For a discussion of the significance of the mirror in Lenin’s literary theory, see Macherey (1978, 106ff).
22