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• 1 2021-12-15T01:28:41+00:00 Religion in Russian Prison Literature 62 Xenya Currie image_header 2021-12-16T01:01:23+00:00

  Russian prison literature, or works written in the Russian language which pertain to experiences of incarceration, spans a long history, ranging from the seventeenth century to the present. Works in this literary tradition can be autobiographical, memoiristic, fictional, nonfictional; they can take the form of prose and poetry, novel and short story. Despite the great range of time over and circumstances in which works in this tradition have been written, various nodes of specificity emerge as continuous throughout many Russian prison texts. One such recurrent node is religion and appeals to religious belief, practice, and imagery. This is not to suggest that such appeals to religion appear in every single work in the tradition of Russian prison literature; rather, religion emerges as a relevant theme in various works throughout the tradition. This encyclopedia entry seeks to chronologically and non-comprehensively survey some such manifestations of religiosity in Russian prison literature.
  
  17th Century
  
  The Life Written by Himself
  
  One of the first works in the tradition of Russian prison literature was Archpriest Avvakum’s The Life Written by Himself, written from approximately 1669 to the mid-1670s. Avvakum Petrov (1620/1–1682) was an Old Believer, an Eastern Orthodox Christian who opposed the reforms to the Russian Orthodox Church introduced by Patriarch Nikon in the seventeenth century. In the Life, Avvakum recounts his experiences of imprisonment, exile, and persecution for his religious dissent. Avvakum’s Life establishes a model of the Russian prison text, one identifiable aspect of which is religiosity, that will be followed by later writers. Avvakum’s engagements with religion are immediate—he begins the Life with an appeal to the “[a]ll-holy Trinity” (Avvakum 37)—and persistent: he frequently references Biblical passages, recounts praying for divine aid, and retells experiences of God working miracles through him. That Avvakum frames his text as an hagiographic saint’s life reveals his self-presentation as a saint and a martyr. Key for Avvakum is the idea that “a true Christian [...] not only [...] live[s] in tribulations even unto death for the sake of the Truth, but passing away in ignorance of the world, [...] liveth forever in wisdom” (Avvakum 38). In appealing to this religious conviction and the ideal of Christ’s kenosis, Avvakum imbues his incarceration with religious significance, suggesting that despite his external imprisonment and suffering, he is in fact an internally liberated participant in divine wisdom.
  
  19th Century
  
  Notes from a Dead House
  
  Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1821–1881) 1862 Notes from a Dead House “was the first published account of life in the Siberian hard-labor camps” (Pevear xii). Dostoevsky’s semi-autobiographical account of his eight years of hard labor and military service after his arrest serves to humanize those who are incarcerated, a project imbued for him with religious significance. Although Notes from a Dead House’s fictional narrator Goryanchikov suggests throughout the text that his fellow prisoners are transparently legible to him, Dostoevsky’s spiritual transformation recounted in the appendix reverses this perception. A transcendent childhood encounter with the peasant Marey, who “could not have given [Dostoevsky] a look shining with more radiant love” (303) when comforting the frightened young Dostoevsky by praying that “Christ be with [him]” (302) and doing the sign of the cross, facilitates Dostoevsky’s recognition of the depth of Marey’s inner experience, regardless of his “dirt-covered” physical appearance (303). This revelation transforms Dostoevsky’s perception of those with whom he was imprisoned, such that “all the hatred and anger in [his] heart [...] vanished completely” (303). The emergent project, of affording both Dostoevsky’s fellow prisoners and Marey “respect for [their] human dignity,” is, for Dostoevsky, a deeply religiously-motivated type of vision (111).
  
  20th Century
  
  "After the Ball"
  
  Leo Tolstoy's (1828–1910) short story “After the Ball,” written in 1903 and published posthumously in 1911, also engages with religious imagery. Tolstoy experienced a profound spiritual crisis and transformation in the 1870s; as one of his post-crisis works, “After the Ball” employs religious imagery as a plea for sympathetic mercy. Religion serves to temporally place the story’s events, for Ivan Vasilyevich notes that it occurs during Butter Week, a religious and folk holiday celebrated the week before Russian Orthodox Lent begins. After the eponymous ball, Ivan Vasilyevich encounters a Tatar being beaten for desertion, whose repeated pleas for mercy are ignored by the colonel, the father of Ivan Vasilyevich’s love interest Varenka. The horror of the merciless violence to which the Tatar is subjected involuntarily invites invocations of God, for the blacksmith utters “O Lord” at the sight (Tolstoy 278). Tolstoy’s text condemns this violence through Ivan Vasilyevich’s affective response to it, for he experiences “an anguish that was almost physical to the point of nausea” and falls out of love with Varenka (278). Paralleling the Tatar’s suffering to Christ’s encourages Tolstoy’s reader to display the compassionate mercy, which the colonel fails to demonstrate, for the plight of prisoners and victims of state-sanctioned violence.
  
  Memoirs of a Revolutionist 
  
  Vera Figner's (1852–1942) 1927 memoir, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, recounts her experience of imprisonment for over twenty years for her participation in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Figner’s religious belief fortifies her throughout the suffering she endures, allowing her to feel “[c]alm and radiant” as she “looks firmly ahead, fully conscious of the fact that what is coming cannot be escaped or averted” (Figner 205). That she regards Christ’s life as an ideal “example of self-sacrificing love” helps her understand her incarceration as a test of her willingness to suffer “for that good which [s]he has longed to attain, not for [her] own transitory self,” but for the sake of others (205). Although the prison, as a “living grave” (205), seeks to deny those imprisoned within it their human dignity, Figner encounters fellow prisoners who conduct themselves with profound goodness, such as her friend Ludmila Alexandrovna, a “loving, self-sacrificing spirit” who goes out of her way to avoid stepping on insects (202). Figner also finds comfort in an icon, given to her by her mother after her trial, of the “Most Holy Virgin of Joy Unexpected,” the sight of which encourages Figner to seek the small joys, without which prison life would be unendurable (228).
  
  "Requiem" 
  
  Religious imagery appears in Anna Akhmatova’s (1889–1966) poetic cycle “Requiem,” written between 1935 and 1961 about the Stalinist terror. Akhmatova parallels her son’s suffering to Christ’s, synecdochally encouraging sympathy for all incarcerated in the gulags and the “tall cross [they] bear” (Ehre 362). Yet Akhmatova’s appeals to the religious imagination also encourage a sympathetic understanding for the plight of those left behind, outside of the gulag; in section X, ‘Crucifixion,’ Akhmatova analogizes not only her son to Christ but also herself—and all the other women, particularly mothers, waiting in the prison lines—to Mary, the Mother of God. Akhmatova emphasizes the response to the crucifixion of the women who witnessed it. Mary is set apart because her grief, like Akhmatova’s, is so profound that it emerges as unwitnessable: although those around can gaze upon “Mary Magdalene trembl[ing] and we[eping]” and John “turn[ing] to stone,” “no one dared to lift his eyes / Where His Mother stood, silent and alone” (364). This invocation of religion encourages a recognition of the intensity of maternal grief which, Akhmatova suggests, both she and the Theotokos experience at their sons’ suffering.
  
  The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
  
  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s (1918–2008) The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, one of the best-known works of Russian prison literature, brings to light the horrors of the Soviet gulag system. Solzhenitsyn engages with religion to suggest that imprisonment permits a greater degree of internal freedom than is otherwise accessible without incarceration, for prison offers him “a free head” even when his “feet [cannot] run along” (Solzhenitsyn 607). Furthermore, prison “causes the profound rebirth of a human being,” through which one’s personality, character, and soul are transformed (604). This transformation carries, for Solzhenitsyn, a religious dimension, as it helps him realize that “[o]nce upon a time [he was] sharply intolerant,” “never forgave anyone,” and “judged people without mercy” (611). His carceral experiences also facilitate his spiritually-motivated conviction that he is unwilling to survive at any price when survival at any price entails survival “at the price of someone else” (603). As incarceration enables the “soul, which formerly was dry, [to ripen] from suffering” (611), it is Solzhenitsyn’s time in the gulag which helps him “come to love [his] neighbors in the Christian sense” and to attain a greater degree of internal freedom despite external imprisonment (603). 
  
  Bibliography 

  Akhmatova, Anna. “Requiem,” translated by Milton Ehre, Literary Imagination: The Review of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics 6.3, 2004, pp. 358–365. 
  
  Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from a Dead House. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage-Random House, 2016.
  
  Figner, Vera. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. Authorized Translation from the Russian, Northern Illinois University Press, 1991. 
  
  Petrov, Avvakum. The Life Written by Himself. Translated by Kenneth N. Brostrom, Michigan Slavic Publications, 1979, pp. 35-113.
  
  Pevear, Richard. Foreword. Notes from a Dead House, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage-Random House, 2016, pp. vii–xvi. 
  
  Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation III-IV. Translated by Thomas P. Whitney, Harper & Row Publishers, 1975, pp. 597-617. 
  
  Tolstoy, Leo. “After the Ball.” Tolstoy’s Short Fiction: Revised Translations, Backgrounds, and Sources Criticism, edited by Michael R. Katz, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 2008, pp. 271–279. 

• 1 2021-12-15T23:40:17+00:00 The Body and Mind, a Second World, and Reclamation of Humanity: Themes of the Russian Prison Text 44 Claire Brouillard image_header 2021-12-17T19:53:41+00:00 In the canon of Russian literature, there is a tradition of prison texts. The beginning of this tradition dates back hundreds of years and the texts typically chronicle either the author’s experience in prison or a fictional yet factual account of prison. For instance, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from a Dead House is a fictional rendition of Dostoevsky’s own prison experience, while Leonid Andreyev’s Seven Who Were Hanged is a fictional account of a group’s experience on death row. In contrast to these texts, Vera Figner’s Memoirs of Revolutionist is the author’s memoir documenting her own prison experience. Although these texts were not all written during the same historical period and have varying levels of fictional elements, they share many similar themes. All three narratives deal with the relationship between the body and the mind, a second world with its own rules, and the reclamation of humanity. Through these themes, the writers are able to give a compelling description of how incarceration affects prisoners during their time in prison. While every prisoner’s experience may be different, themes such as these highlight the shared experience of incarceration and its physical and mental effects on prisoners in the writing of Dostoevsky, Andreyev, and Figner.
  
  
  In Notes from a Dead House, the narrator, Goryanchikov, firmly believes that there is a strong connection between the body and the mind. For Goryanchikov, this means that he believes he can judge character based on appearance. For inmates such as Alei, whom Goryanchikov deems extraordinary, “His whole soul [is] expressed in his handsome—one might even say beautiful—face” (Dostoevsky 60). Alei’s physical appearance is a reflection of his goodness; Goryanchikov sees beauty in both his appearance and his soul. Other prisoners, such as Shishkov, a “cowardly and flimsy fellow” who killed his wife, are described as having “eyes [that are] somehow restless, and sometimes as if dully pensive” (212). In Shishkov’s eyes, Goryanchikov sees a reflection of his inner mind and thought process. This implies that one’s appearance is a physical representation of mind and soul. 
  
  A similar connection between the body and mind is seen through Sergey in Seven Who Were Hanged, as after he receives his execution sentence, he decides to manipulate his physical form. He first decides to exercise, but as his body grows stronger, so does his fear of death. To combat this, he decides to grow weaker as “he [threatens] his body, and at the same time sadly, yet tenderly he [feels] his flabby, softened muscles with his hand” (Andreyev 242). This threat to his form shows that Sergey’s mind holds power over his body; his body is simply the vessel in which his mind exists. It is the fears that his mind and soul hold that motivate him to manipulate his physical form, and it is his mind that he cannot alter. 
  
  The mind’s power over the body is also shown in Figner’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist, as Figner enters the prison and “[her] soul flew off somewhere, or rather it retreated and shrunk into a tiny lump. There was left only [her] body, which knew neither shame nor moral pain” (Figner 180). Throughout her incarceration, Figner is able to separate the pain and torture that her physical form experiences from her mind and soul, believing that it does not matter what happens to her body as long as her mind and soul remain intact. When Figner is finally able to see her family, she seems to lose control of her mind for the first time as “[her] consciousness, like an outside observer, [stands] terrified, and [asks]: What is happening? Will this go on, and am I losing my mind?” (305). In this instance, she is again separating her body and her mind, as her body does not experience the same fear and loss of control that her mind does. This division differs from the others, as it is her mind that is experiencing turmoil instead of her physical form. Nonetheless, the experience is separate from her body, meaning that this division is seen throughout all three texts and unites them under this theme.
  
  Another theme seen throughout these texts is separation from the outside world. When Goryanchikov first arrives, he describes being “in a special world, unlike anything else; it [has] its own special laws, its own clothing, its own morals and customs, an alive dead house, a life like nowhere else, and special people (Dostoevsky 8). This description illustrates how the prison seems to be its own world, showing that in order for incarcerated people to survive, they must learn the morals and customs of this society that is new to them. The image of the dead house itself is a metaphor for the prison: it is a house without the warmth of a home and it holds those who are socially dead. This shows not only a separation between the prisoners and the outside world, but also an inversion in a domestic space. This house provides shelter, but instead of  providing comfort it keeps inmates trapped inside. 
  
  Similarly, when Sergey’s parents come to visit him before his execution, there seems to be a difference in their behavior and appearance inside and outside of the prison. They find it “terrible for them to utter even a word, as though each word in the language had lost its individual meaning and meant but one thing—Death” (Andreyev 227). It is as though the meaning of their words has changed inside the prison as they are consumed by the thoughts of their son’s death. Sergey’s father also “had been taller than Sergey, but now he became short, and his dry, downy head lay like a white ball upon his son’s shoulder” (229). This shows a reversal of the father and son roles: Sergey has grown taller than his father and now must comfort him in his time of trouble. This transformation occurs only inside the prison, showing that while the prison may have similarities to the outside world, it is not subject to the traditions of society and instead has its own customs and roles for prisoners to play.
  
  The idea of prison being separate from the outside world is also present in Figner’s text. When she arrives at her prison, she notes that “it called to mind one’s native village” (Figner 179). In spite of the nostalgia this might elicit, it shows how prison creates its own society; it creates its own village. While she is being checked by the military doctor, she also describes a woman “who had the physiognomy and manners of a housekeeper in charge of a ‘respectable’ home” (180). Like the dead house, these descriptions make it seem as though the prison is a house or village separate from society. It has its own houses and its own housekeepers, but they function differently than homes and housekeepers in the outside world. The houses keep prisoners from leaving instead of providing shelter and warmth and these housekeepers keep prisoners in line instead of keeping a home clean. These distinctions and references to the outside world show that there is a connection between the outside world in the prison, but that the prison society is somewhat warped due to the prisoners’ lack of autonomy. This is seen in all three texts, as they all invert domestic concepts. This is significant because a prison acts as a dwelling for those who are incarcerated, but it lacks the warmth and familiarity associated with the domesticity of the outside world.
  
  In these texts, prisoners make efforts to reclaim their humanity. For Goryanchikov and his fellow inmates, this reclamation of humanity happens at Christmas, when “the prisoner unconsciously [feels] that by observing the holiday he [is] as if in contact with the whole world, that he [is] therefore not entirely an outcast, a lost man, a cut-off slice, that things in prison were the same as among other people” (Dostoevsky 131). Observing the holiday allows the prisoners to feel as if they are not alone, as if they are still connected to the outside world and its conventions. On this day, the prisoners are also guarded more leniently, giving them a sense of greater autonomy even though they still have very little, if any, which also connects them to the outside world. This also relates to the domestic inversion of prison, as Christmas is celebrated with inmates who act as a dysfunctional family. This allows the prisoners to recover the humanity that they have been stripped of, if only for a day.
  
  Sergey and his comrades are also able to reclaim their humanity through connection to others. While they are on their way to be hanged, “they [glance] at each other, [smile] and immediately [begin] to feel at ease and unrestrained, as before” (Andreyev 254). This lack of restraint again echoes feelings of autonomy, but for this group it is the sense of camaraderie that connects them most to the outside world. Before their arrest and trial, the group worked very closely together and cared very deeply for each other, as if they were a family. They lose this connection in prison, as they kept separate for almost three weeks, but they are once again able to experience human connection before their deaths. It is this connection that allows them to reclaim their humanity in their final moments. 
  
  Like Sergey and his comrades, Figner also reclaims her humanity through human connection. When Ludmila Alexandrovna enters the prison, she and Figner quickly befriend each other and Figner notes that “she was [her comfort, [her] joy and happiness” and that “her smile alone, and the sight of her dear face dispelled [her] grief, and gladdened my heart” (Figner 196-197). By connecting with another human being, Figner’s spirits are lifted and she is comforted. Human connection is such a vital piece of humanity and is one of the pieces that suffers the most in prison, especially when prisoners are kept in solitary confinement. In these narratives, whenever characters are able to connect with each other, they feel almost as if they are connecting with the outside world where they were free to connect with others whenever they pleased. It is these connections that allow prisoners to reclaim the humanity that they are stripped of as they lose their autonomy. 
  
  The themes of the relationship between the body and the mind, separation from the outside world, and reclamation of humanity allow Dostoevsky, Andreyev, and Figner to represent incarceration in a manner that draws attention to the horrors that prisoners experience. Through the relationship of the body and the mind, we see how prisoners are forced to separate their minds from their bodies so that they are better able to handle to physical pain and torture of being incarcerated. This connects the texts, as it shows that while incarcerated, prisoners may find it beneficial to treat their mind as an entity that is separate from their physical being. Goryanchikov sees the body as a mere reflection of the mind, meaning that he holds the importance of the mind above that of the body. For Sergey and Figner, the body seems to be a container for the mind; as long as the mind is in control, it does not matter what happens to the body. By treating the body in this way, prisoners are able to better cope with the pain that is inflicted upon their bodies, allowing them to survive in dire conditions.
  
  The separation from the outside world shows how prisoners are forced to learn new customs and social orders so that they can function inside the prison. By doing this, they become separated from the customs of the outside world, making it difficult for them to relearn social conventions and be rehabilitated into the outside world. The domestic inversion speaks to the idea that prison is a shelter inhabited by inmates, but it is unlike any shelter they might find elsewhere. This is because they lack autonomy, meaning that instead of being in control of their house or their housekeepers, these entities have control over them, as the walls of the prison keep them inside and the guards hold power over the inmates. Due to lack of human connection, prisoners are also deprived of humanity. By reclaiming this, the authors show how much prisoners lose along with their autonomy and how they are not allowed to function as they would in the outside world. This shows how the restrictive nature of prison does not benefit inmates, but instead causes harm to their emotional well being. These themes directly connect to the shared experience of incarceration and show how prisoners are forced to relearn how to survive because prison is so unlike the outside world. The Russian prison text functions as a demonstration of the prison experience and how it permanently affects prisoners as they are stripped of their humanity. This allows not only those who do not have personal experience to understand incarceration but might also provide a sense of comfort for current and former prisoners in the sense that they know someone has also experienced what they are being forced to go through—as evidenced by the intertextual nature of the Russian Prison Text. 
  
  Bibliography
  Andreyev, Leonid. Seven Who Were Hanged. Ten Modern Short Novels, edited by Leo Hamalian and Edmond L. Volpe, 195-274. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958.
  Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from a Dead House. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage Classics, 2015.
  Figner, Vera. a. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991.