Читаем Summerfolk полностью

Iurii Trifonov, perhaps the most penetrating literary observer of the ways of Soviet urban society, tended to present the dacha in rather similar terms: as a symbol of self-serving materialistic values. In The House on the Embankment, the dacha at Bruskovo is the first of Professor Ganchuk’s possessions that captures the imagination of his acquisitive, upwardly mobile, and ultimately treacherous protégé, Glebov. In The Old Man (1978), Pavel Evgrafovich Letunov, the pensioner of the title, has been a member of the dacha cooperative Burevestnik (Stormy Petrel) for more than forty years.94 Burevestnik (in 1973) is the backdrop for a typically Trifonovian generational conflict between the well-stocked memory and moral sensibility of an old revolutionary (Letunov) and the shortsightedness and materialistic values of his children and their spouses. The immediate cause of tension within the family is a dacha that has just fallen vacant after the sole remaining resident died without leaving behind any close relatives. Letunov’s son Ruslan and daughter Vera urge him to go and talk to the chairman of the cooperative, Prikhod’ko: as the most prominent Old Bolshevik in the settlement, he commands considerable respect, and his extended family claims it badly needs extra living space. But Letunov is reluctant to oblige: in part, he is dismayed by his family’s acquisitive instincts, but most of all he does not want to ask favors of Prikhod’ko, whom he has known and disliked for several decades (ever since he sat on the commission that expelled Prikhod’ko from the Party in the early 1920s). Letunov never does speak to Prikhod’ko about this matter, but the other main candidates for occupancy of the vacant dacha drop out of the running quite by chance. At the end of the novel, however, it appears that all the various parties’ efforts to gain influence over Prikhod’ko may count for nothing: the site has been earmarked for construction of a new boardinghouse for vacationers.

As always, Trifonov is highly informative on the networks of personal contacts (and, correspondingly, the destructive envy and petty rivalries) that pervaded Soviet society. The importance of blat in obtaining building materials and in determining priority in the allocation of dachas is highly reminiscent of dacha cooperatives in the 1930s (with the crucial difference that no one, not even the most flagrant abuser of the Soviet system, is likely to be branded an “enemy of the people”). Take the following interior monologue by Oleg Vasil’evich Kandaurov, the most aggressive fixer in the novel:

There is some character called Gorobtsov who’s first on the list, not for this house specifically but for the first share that becomes available, and who’s now in the running, but it won’t be hard to compete with him, as he hasn’t done anything for the cooperative. But Oleg Vasil’evich has. He sorted out the telephones. Brought along rubberoid for the office. A year ago he went through the Mossovet, via Maksimenkov, to make sure that Burevestnik got allocated its own stretch of land by the river with a cabana and a small area for mooring boats. This pathetic lot wouldn’t have got a damn thing done without him.95

Kandaurov only states brazenly values that all too many of the cooperative members share. In fact, dacha life is presented as providing a focus for the spiritual corruption of “mature” Soviet society. Not only have the residents of Burevestnik long since forgotten their cooperative roots, they are also unfailingly indolent. In The Old Man a good deal of tea is drunk and jam eaten, but we never hear of anyone digging a vegetable patch; significantly, the positive character Letunov spent very little time at the dacha in his youth and middle age. Trifonov, of course, is far from being an unprejudiced observer. He is creating his own myth of dacha existence as sinfully empty, idle, and mean-spirited. As in Gorky’s Dachniki, minor disputes thinly conceal more profound human failures.96

The Garden-Plot Dacha

Перейти на страницу:

Похожие книги

Косьбы и судьбы
Косьбы и судьбы

Простые житейские положения достаточно парадоксальны, чтобы запустить философский выбор. Как учебный (!) пример предлагается расследовать философскую проблему, перед которой пасовали последние сто пятьдесят лет все интеллектуалы мира – обнаружить и решить загадку Льва Толстого. Читатель убеждается, что правильно расположенное сознание не только даёт единственно верный ответ, но и открывает сундуки самого злободневного смысла, возможности чего он и не подозревал. Читатель сам должен решить – убеждают ли его представленные факты и ход доказательства. Как отличить действительную закономерность от подтасовки даже верных фактов? Ключ прилагается.Автор хочет напомнить, что мудрость не имеет никакого отношения к формальному образованию, но стремится к просвещению. Даже опыт значим только количеством жизненных задач, которые берётся решать самостоятельно любой человек, а, значит, даже возраст уступит пытливости.Отдельно – поклонникам детектива: «Запутанная история?», – да! «Врёт, как свидетель?», – да! Если учитывать, что свидетель излагает события исключительно в меру своего понимания и дело сыщика увидеть за его словами объективные факты. Очные ставки? – неоднократно! Полагаете, что дело не закрыто? Тогда, документы, – на стол! Свидетелей – в зал суда! Досужие личные мнения не принимаются.

Ст. Кущёв

Культурология