Naomi Caffee

"As the Cupola to Empty Skies": The Eternal Chronotope of Poetry in Mandelstam's Восьмистишия (Octaves) Cycle

Caroline Lemak Brickman, Reed College

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  Silver Age poet Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam poses questions about the origins of art and the role of the poet in his cycle of eight-line lyric poems, Восьмистищия (Octaves). Invoking figures and landscapes both mythic and historical, Mandelstam keeps returning to the same fundamental questions: which came first, the poet or his art? Can a poet exist before a tradition of poesis? Can a poem exist without having been inscribed by someone upon something? This paper explores Mandelstam's treatment of these questions in three of the cycle's poems, with special attention to the recurring image of the cupola standing in relief against the vault of the heavens. In these three poems, Mandelstam begins by proposing an origin of poetry born from the image of masculine, phallic, and godly figure of the firmament impregnating the sensuous, earthly, and feminine figure of nature—and the subsequent birth of the poet, one of their offspring. He later rejects this vision for another mythic chronotope, as he tries to imagine a time before the written word, but he concludes that this period of time is already inscribed within poetry. Finally, he develops an eternal poetic chronotope, establishing the poet as a member of a tradition of artists and thinkers who are servants to their own work while trusting in their audience. For Mandelstam, the poet is metaphysically subservient both to his predecessors and to the products of his own endeavors, i.e., his own poems.

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The Russian Energy State: An Economic and Legal Assessment

Nadine Dorsht, University of California, Los Angeles

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  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was no longer the superpower the world once feared. Once the dominant head of a communist sphere composed of fifteen countries, it now faced economic instability, impending ethnic unrest, and mass emigration, all of which served to hamper the country's development as a free, democratic nation. Though Russia eventually learned to adapt to a new economic system, fallout from the post-communist transition was to dictate Russia’s political and business landscape for the next two decades. Several side effects of the transition to capitalism were the rise of the protection industry, widespread corruption in law enforcement organs, and mass center-periphery divergence. Though it was able to once control an entire network of subordinate satellite states, Russia found itself, upon transition, unable to control even its own borders, as well as unable to enforce law and order. In response to years of political sabotage by Russia's various regions, President Vladimir Putin made it a priority during his administration to implement reforms centered on the consolidation of power within the country’s administrative units. At the same time, however, the government began implementing a widespread transformation of energy firms, turning them into a state-controlled operation. While Russia has seen positive changes since the fall of communism, the business and legal environments have suffered at the hands of undemocratic policies and unsavory practices, often to the detriment of possible increased foreign investment. Government policy has therefore served to obstruct the creation of a fully transparent business environment and stable legal framework, and continues to do so today. The immense tension surrounding BP operations within Russia has further highlighted the institutional weaknesses that limit Russia's potential to build a more democratic society.

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A Struggle against Oppression: An Analysis of Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s

Derek Groom and Sydney Heller, University of California, Los Angeles

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  In response to institutional anti-Semitism and rampant discrimination, an increasing number of Jewish Soviet citizens sought to emigrate out of the Soviet Union (USSR) during the 1970s and 1980s. With many obstacles in place, however, many would-be emigrants did not manage to obtain the necessary exit visas. Among these obstacles was the so-called "diploma tax," which aimed to force hopeful, highly educated Jewish emigrants pay back the money that the Soviet government spent on their higher education. In addition to the monetary hardships, any Jewish citizen who applied for an exit visa was to be stripped of their Soviet citizenship and labeled an "enemy of the people." Despite these obstacles, many Soviet Jews continued to apply for exit visas, in the search for a better life outside the USSR. Although the number of Jews who applied for exit visas during these two decades remained consistent, the number allowed to emigrate by the Soviet government fluctuated. This discrepancy was influenced by the trajectory of U.S.-Soviet relations concerning trade, arms control, and human rights. In addition to pressuring the Soviet government to make concessions with concern to Jewish emigration, the U.S. became a popular destination for Jewish emigrants. In order to obtain firsthand accounts of this emigration process, we conducted video interviews in Russian with Russian Jewish émigrés living in Los Angeles. Although the interviewees varied in age and background, all of their accounts suggest that leaving the USSR at that time was the best available option for Jews seeking a more promising life without discrimination. In this paper, we will analyze the social conditions in the post-Stalinist USSR that prompted thousands of Jewish citizens to desire a new life in the West, while also focusing on how they managed to emigrate.

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Margarita Uncovered: Sexuality, Power, and Gender in Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

Michaela Magdalena Juklova, University of California, San Diego, University of Warwick

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  This essay explores the sexual politics of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, with a special focus on the female heroine Margarita. Despite her dynamic nature, suffering and display of bravery that supersedes many of the male character’s in the novel, she is denied the agency that she deserves based on her gender. Her main weapon that she uses to combat this unfair situation is her sexuality, which brings her not only to her Master, whose novel she adopts as a child and towards whom she acts in a motherly manner, but also to Woland. I argue that Margarita was a witch before she met the supernatural characters from Woland’s troupe and before she symbolically bathed herself in the ointment given to them. Because of her sexuality and internalized child-like behavior, she is an attractive character and hence she is both feared by and attractive to men. While it is never explicitly mentioned in the novel that she has sexual intercourse with Woland in order to save her beloved master, I argue that the textual evidence points towards this act, as she in some ways replaces Woland’s previous helper, Hella. This situates her in a position of a "holy whore" character, a kind of Dostoevskian prostitute. By being seen as this, Margarita provides a much needed female character similar to that of Mary of Magdala for the biblical Yeshua chapters of the book, which are missing a female element.

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The Romanian New Wave: Witnessing Everyday Life in the Ceausescu Era and Understanding Post-Communist Dilemmas

Stefania Marghitu, Indiana University

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  This paper deals with the nominal "Romanian New Wave" movement that emerged in the mid 2000s. The films come from a generation of directors that address issues of national identity before and after the fall of communism in 1989, with the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. The stories focus on individual characters and the everyday effects of the dictator's reign. Specifically, this paper analyzes two films set in the final years of the regime that tackle different aspects of life in communist Romania.

  4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days follows a young college student and her roommate who must have an illegal abortion upon her unplanned pregnancy, as all forms of birth control were illegal. Issues of lack of privacy and fear of persecution permeate the young women. The film is both stunning and shocking due to its detachment and lack of sentimentality, as the procedure is a necessary survival skill rather than a moral or ethical choice.

  The Way I Spent the End of the World is centered on the socialist education system and the repercussions of the smallest act of dissent. A small suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Bucharest serves as a microcosm for the Romanian population, with the Securitate (Romanian Secret Police, akin to Soviet KGB) as the dictator’s watchdogs. Once again, privacy is limited and life is dominated by the desires of the dictator.

  These Romanian New Wave directors received critical acclaim for their first films as well several significant awards at Cannes Film Festival. In the past few years, the initial "buzz" faded yet the small group of directors continue to make honest films that confront the common identity crisis that Romanian citizens deal with in understanding the country's history and transition to a capitalist society.

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Yevgenia Ginzburg's Personal Inferno

Tatiana Zavodny, University of California, San Diego

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  During the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet Union engaged in a series of purges to rid the Communist Party of certain members. Throughout these two decades, thousands of people were falsely imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag system and many were killed for their supposed anti-government sentiments. Yevgenia Ginzburg, a university professor, was one of those falsely imprisoned. In her non-fiction novel, Journey into the Whirlwind, Ginzburg recounts her eighteen-year ordeal in the Soviet Gulag system and her treatment as a political prisoner. While Ginzburg’s novel was arguably influenced by numerous works of literature, this paper focuses solely on the influence of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. This work of Italian fiction is the first of three parts of the Divine Comedy and describes the speaker’s descent through hell. When reading these works, one will initially notice the structural similarity between Ginzburg’s nine prison stays and Dante’s nine circles of hell. This paper also examines the similarities between Ginzburg’s three initial interrogators and the three beasts encountered before entering hell in Dante’s Inferno. These are two of the most important aspects of this analysis and are discussed further throughout the paper. The argument provided here is intended to demonstrate only some of the similarities between Ginzburg’s novel and Dante’s work. Ginzburg, with all her literary knowledge, appears to have chosen Dante’s work to relate her journey to a wider audience and give a voice to so many others who suffered alongside her.

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