The critical debate on Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko, beginning
approximately when he started publishing his work in the early 1920s,
has been in many ways distillable to the following question: Who is
Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko laughing at? Or: Is Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko
pro
or anti
Soviet? The answer, whether
positive or negative, is evaluated according to whether the critic is
his or herself for
or against
the Soviet
system. Thus Andrej &Zhachek;danov, in the infamous, venomous attack
on Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko and Axmatova in 1946 that resulted in the
expulsion of both writers from the Writers' Union, read
Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko as portraying Soviet people as idlers
and monsters,
and went on to invite
Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko to leave the literary scene (in a way
reminiscent of the ejection of the Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko hero from
the theater in so many of his stories): If
Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko does not approve of the Soviet way of life
&ellipsis; let him clear out of Soviet literature.
Critics on the
other side of the political fence from &Zhachek;danov have seen
Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko as either a naive believer in the building of
communism, or as a political dissenter and martyr.
Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko was, at least initially, and like many of
the writers of his generation, pro
, although he did
make space in his stories for an anti-Soviet perspective through his
famed satirical technique of double-voicedness. The resulting critique
of the reality portrayed in his stories was not, however, made from
the perspective of a political dissenter, but rather from that of a
critic of culture— in fact of the very idea that man is
civilizable. (cf. Zholkovsky 1994) Of course, the irony inherent in
that critique— coming as it did from the pen of a writer, and in
fact a highly cultured
one, could not have been lost on
Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko. Hence, the
a projection of his own flawed inner
self.
Yet Zo&shachek;&chachek;enko's hopes for a better
world—evinced most clearly in his introductions to the 1934 work
This paper will focus on several stories from