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Introduction: Russian
Autobiographies of the
Twentieth Century:
Fictions of The Self
a
Marina Balina
a
Illinois Wesleyan University
Published online: 03 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Marina Balina (1996) Introduction: Russian

Autobiographies of the Twentieth Century: Fictions of The Self, a/b:
Auto/Biography Studies, 11:2, 3-7

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dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989575.1996.10846739

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 Introduction: Russian Autobiographies
of the Twentieth Century:
Fictions of The Self

By Marina Balina

Pure autobiographies [Autobiographien] are written either by neu-

rotics who are fascinated by their own ego, as in Rousseau's case; or
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by authors of a robust artistic or adventuresome self-love, such as

Benvenuto Cellini; or by born historians who regard themselves only
as material for historical art; or by women who also coquette with
posterity; or by pedantic minds who want to bring even the most
minute things in order before they die and cannot let themselves leave
the world without commentaries. [They] can also be regarded as mere
plaidoyears [legal pleadings] before the public. Another great group
among the autobiographers [Autobiographen] is formed by
autopseusts [self-deceivers].
-Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum.

Not one of the autobiographies presented in this collection can be placed in

the category of "pure" autobiographies. Does this mean that the authors who
wrote these works belong to the category of "self-deceivers"? Is the eclectic
nature of the forms of these autobiographies evidence of their special
"Russianness" or is this a phenomenon of a different. more global order? These
are the questions that I would like to address in my introduction.
The twentieth century in the history of Russia. as in the history of all hu-
manity, is a century that culminated in significant changes in the life of the
country. The generation that lived through two world wars and three revolutions
(perestroika of the 1980s equals in the depth of its global disruptions-not onl y
on the level of economics but also on the level of human psychology-the dis-
ruptions called forth by the October revolution) cannot place the description of
their lives in the traditional framework of the established genre. The rupture of
the usual links between people of the same generation. the destruction of the
concept formed over the centuries of human beings and their place in life. the
reconsideration of fundamental human values in the course of the century sim-
ply had to be reflected in literature and above all in literature that concentrates
on self-reflection. particularly on autobiography. The Russian poet Osip
Mandelshtam, generalizing the experience of all humanity, wrote that: "the sense
 4 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

of time that man possesses in order to act, to conquer, to perish, to love-this

sense of time gave the European novel its basic tonality, for I repeat: the compo-
sitional measure of the novel is human biography .... Today Europeans are
plucked out of their own biographies, like balls out of the pockets of billiard
tables" (203-4). According to Mandelshtam, a human being in the twentieth
century is "a man devoid of biography" (204), and the attempt to create his
biography in an extraordinary time, over-saturated by global historical changes,
calls to life the most varied forms of the autobiographical genre. Jane Gary Har-
ris writes in "Diversity of Discourse: Autobiographical Statements in Theory
and Praxis," her brilliant introduction to her anthology, Autobiographical State-
ments in Twentieth Century Russian Literature: "Autobiographical narrative
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throughout the twentieth century has been offered a new and flexible literary
utterance, as an 'open' form ready to assimilate change in an age of change and
discontinuity" (33). The Russian/Soviet writers whose autobiographies are dis-
cussed in this volume make wide use of this new "openness" of the autobio-
graphical genre. and their works demonstrate the most varied autobiographical
forms: from the outwardly traditional story in the first person (Lidiia Chukovskaia
in Sarah Pratt's article on women autobiographers) to the fictional autobiogra-
phy of co-consciousness (John Givens' article on Shukshin), which includes
two alter egos of the author. However, despite the external differences and var-
ied reasons prompting authors to tum to the autobiographical genre, they are
united by the general approach to this genre as an opportunity to perform a
moral act toward themselves and their time.
In my analysis of the genre of autobiography. I share the point of view of
Elizabeth Bruss, who sees autobiography as "an autonomous act with its own
rules and responsibilities" (6), emphasizing here that "the diversity of [autobio-
graphical] works alone should be enough to demonstrate that there is no intrin-
sically autobiographical form" (10). In accordance with the rules of the autobio-
graphical act, the autobiographical texts presented here become "a field within
which the task of self-imaging and self-evaluation is understood to take place,
making whatever does take place recognizable as a form of self-evaluation"
(13). Without exception, all the analyses of autobiographies in this collection
demonstrate the presence of self-evaluation in one form or another: there is the
evaluation of oneself as a fictional character (in Thomas Marullo's article on
Bunin and in John Givens' article on Shukshin's Lubavin Family), self-evalua-
tion in the form of a lyrical digression in the first person (some of the village
prose writers in Kathleen Parthe's "The Rural Writer's Imagined Childhood"),
evaluation of the self through recollections of the life of the other (in Sarah
Pratt's article on women's autobiographies). and finally self-evaluation through
the eyes of the reader (quasi-autobiographical statements in Brodsky's lyrical
 Russian Autobiographies 5

poetry in the article by Piotr Fast). It is interesting that in order to fully achieve
this process of self-evaluation, all autobiographers use the same principle, ac-
commodating among themsel ves and the events of their Iives a third person, that
of a certain "other," who is sometimes invented (Shukshin) and sometimes real
(Nadezhda Mandelshtam). The classification proposed by Elizabeth Bruss, ac-
cording to which "the autobiographer undertakes a dual role," in which "He is
the source of the subject matter and of the structure to be found in the text" (11-
2), falls apart since for the successful process of self-evaluation in Russian biog-
raphy of the twentieth century an essential presence is this third center=tbe
other. This other most frequently takes upon himself or herself the role of a
potential "I," an "I" that was lost by the author in the course of constant compro-
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mises at the base of which most often lies the struggle to survive in a troubled
time of political reaction and a totalitarian regime (Shukshin) or of difficult
conditions of internal and external emigration (Bunin, Chukovskaia, Brodsky).
A special case in this group is Gorkii (discussed by Barratt and Dobrenko), who
was led by the constant path of compromise with the revolution and the new
regime to lose control over the facts of his own life. The third center-the other-
may also serve as a "loophole" (a Bakhtinian term), in which it is possible to
hide, in order not to take responsibility for oneself and to fence oneself off,
placing a distance both between oneself and what has been written and between
oneself and what has been lived through. At the same time, this "other" may
serve as the highest standard by which to measure the value of the life that has
been lived.
Underlying the autobiographical texts discussed in this collection is the
autobiographical act that is initiated by "the writer taking up his pen to confront
his own experience of history" (Harris 15). In this situation these autobiogra-
phies grow beyond the boundaries of "a second reading of experience" (Gusdorf
38) and become "acts of moral testimony," and "to the extent that the writer's
encounter with his culture or with his epoch is confrontational, it may, and it
often does, involve a significant moral dimension" (Harris 15). Geoffrey Hartman,
in The Unmediated Vision, writes that modem writers have "lost the full under-
standing of revealed religion, accepted the individual quest for truth and forced
by the same quest to seek mediation, sought it neither in Christ nor in tradition
but in the very things that caused them to speak: personal experience and sense
experience" (172-3). In these cases, personal experience "becomes the sole au-
thority and source of conviction" (173), which in essence contradicts the very
three-focused structure of the Russian autobiographies analyzed in this collec-
tion. In order to carry out the "individual quest for truth," authors must either
refrain from attempting to reflect their own lives (as Gorkii later did), or try to
reunite on the basis of the written text the inner link between the three different
 6 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

focuses of autobiographical narration. For this, the author in the text must reject
the third focus-the other-and take upon himself the responsibility for the deeds
and the life of the author olthe text since "art and life are not one, but they must
become united in me, in the wholeness of my responsibility" (Bakhtin 6). In this
way, performing through the creation of an autobiography a moral act with re-
spect to the epoch and the culture in which they live, the authors of the autobiog-
raphies analyzed here also perform an internal moral act, uniting disparate pieces
of their lives, since "only the unity of responsibility ... guarantees the internal
connection among the elements of a personality" (6).
Russian autobiographical writings of the twentieth century present a com-
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plex and varied picture. Soviet criticism assigned to this genre the name "docu-
mentary prose," in this way emphasizing its "documentary" nature and "authen-
ticity" as the most important qualities of autobiography, although admitting the
presence of "fictional elements."! Post-Soviet critics as a rule consider autobi-
ography from the general position of post-modernist texts, not distinguishing
any specific traits of the genre (in this connection the article of Mark Lipovetsky
in this volume is one of the first attempts to speak specifically of the general
characteristics of Russian post-modernist autobiography). The complicated and
contradictory unification of fiction and documentary within the framework of a
single text continues to remain one of the leading characteristics of the genre.
The most satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon may be Paul de Man's
statement in "Autobiography as Defacement" that "the distinction between au-
tobiography and fiction is not an either/or polarity" (68). This perception ac-
knowledges a freedom unique to the Russian autobiographical narrative: it al-
lows us to view the interaction between fictional and documentary elements
within one narrative as an open-ended dialogue that is concerned with "finding
a place, meaning or identity for the self in a discontinuous, often alien, incom-
prehensible. and chaotic world" (Harris 25)-the world of Russian twentieth-
century reality.
I will allow myself to conclude this introduction with the words of St.
Augustine, one of the earliest autobiographers, which most accurately reflect
the task that twentieth-century Russian autobiographers have set for themselves:
"I beseech You, God, to show my full self to myself."

Illinois Wesleyan University

Notes

I. For criticism on contemporary Russian autobiographical writings in Russian, see Balburov,

Urban, Ivanova, and discussions in Novyi Mir (1968), Inostrannaja literatura (1966), Voprosy
literatury (1966). and Literaturnaja Gazeta (1967). In English, see Harris and Vatnikova-Pnzel.
 Russian Autobiographies 7

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. "Iskusstvo i otvetstvennost." Estetika slovesnogo

tvorchestva. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979.5--6.
Balburov, E.A. Poetika liricheskoj prozy: 1960s-1970s. Novosibirsk: Nauka,
1985.
Bruss, Elizabeth. Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary
Genre. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1976.
De Man, Paul. "Autobiography as Defacement." The Rhetoric of Romanticism.
By de Man. New York: Columbia UP, 1984. 67-81.
Gusdorf, Georges. "Conditions and Limits of Autobiography." Autobiography:
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Essays Theoretical and Critical. Ed. James Olney. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UP, 1980. 28-48.
Harris, Jane Gary. "Introduction: Diversity of Discourse: Autobiographical State-
ments in Theory and Praxis." Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth Cen-
tury Russian Literature. Ed. Harris. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. 3-35.
Hartman, Geoffrey. The Unmediated Vision. New York: Harcourt, 1966. 172-3.
Ivanova, Natalja. Tochka zrenia. 0 proze poslednikh literatura. Moscow: Soviet
Pisatel, 1988 .
.Mandeistam, Osip, "The End of the Novel." The Complete Prose and Letters.
Ed. Jane Gary Harris. Trans. Harris and Constance Link. Ann Arbor, MI:
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__ . "Konets romana". Sochineniia v 2-x tomakh. Vol. 2. Moscow: Khudozh.
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Urban, Adol 'f. "Khudozhestvennaja autobiografia idocument'." Zvezda 2 (1977):
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Vatnikova- Prizei, Zoja. Russian Memoir Literature: Critical Analysis and Bibli-
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