As always, I owe a special debt to Eric Naiman and Kaja Silverman for their help and guidance. This project was begun under their care and is, in many ways, the product of their teaching and mentorship. My many thanks also go to my colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois who have witnessed the "working-through" of this project, and in particular to Robert Rushing, who continues to make reading and psychoanalysis important. The epigraph is taken from Victor Pelevin's Omon Ra, trans. Andrew Bromfield (New York, 1996), 30.

1 Platonov, Andrei, “Musornyi veter,” Izbrannyeproizvedeniia (Moscow, 1983)Google Scholar.

2 Silverman, Kaja, Male Subjectivity at the Margins (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

3 Zizek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York, 1997)Google Scholar.

4 Igor Smirnov enumerates the typical Stalinist motives of want (from cold and hunger) , torture, beatings, backbreaking labor, disease, and wounding, writing: “It is striking that the larger part of the characters, those who have won back their place in life despite their physical ailments, suffer from constraints on their mobility, as does, for example, the one-legged Voropaev (who, moreover, is ill with tuberculosis and has a damaged liver), the legless Meres'ev, the paralyzed Korchagin. The motif of limping finds standard expression in the Stalinist text: we will mention here … Vikhrov who leans on a cane; the engineer Kovshov in Far from Moscow, who injures his leg twice; Semion Goncharenko in Cavalier ofthe Gold Star, who suffers the same fate; and Varia, from the same novel, whose leg is maimed by a bull.” Smirnov, Psikhodiakhronohgika: Psikhoistoriia russkoi literatury ot romantizma do nashikhdnei (Moscow, 1994), 253.

5 Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the Margins, 15-16. Mikhail Chiaureli's Padenie Berlina (The fall of Berlin, 1949) is particularly clear on this point: at the end of the film, Natasha and Alesha appear together before Stalin, a larger-than-life figure, dressed in an impeccable white uniform. Stalin is so tall, in fact, that while standing on tiptoe, Natasha can only reach up high enough to kiss him on the shoulder. Under Stalin's approving gaze, she then returns to Alesha, clearly the lesser of the two men, whose bandaged head points at once to his sacrifice and his lack.

6 See Naiman, Eric, Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar; and Borenstein, Eliot, Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction,1917-1929 (Durham, 2000)Google Scholar.

7 Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the Margins, 15.

8 Ibid., 2.

9 “Clean-cut and square jawed,” as John Haynes has argued, the New Soviet Man should be written in all caps. Haynes, John, New Soviet Man: Gender and Masculinity in StalinistSoviet Cinema (New York, 2003), 1 Google Scholar.

10 Archival materials on N. Ostrovskii are located in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva, f. 363, op. 1 and 2 (krainie daty dokumental'nykh materialov 1915-1937 gg.), edited by Raisa Porfir'evna Ostrovskaia; Arkhiv Moskovskogo muzeia N. Ostrovskogo; Arkhiv Shepetovskogo muzeia N. Ostrovskogo; and Arkhiv Sochinskogo muzeia N. Ostrovskogo.

11 The writing process itself was a “heroic act.” Ostrovskii was said to have written the novel himself, using a transparency (tranparant)—a regular paper folder with sections, about eight millimeters in width, cut out of the top to match the lines on a page. Numbering the pages and never lifting his hand off the folder so as not to lose his place, Ostrovskii was able to stay within the lines of the page as he was writing. The following day, his family and friends would transcribe the text in notebooks. When this effort became too much and the work progressed too slowly, Ostrovskii engaged his neighbor, the eighteenyear- old Galina Alekseeva, to take dictation.

12 Boris Polevoi's hero Aleksei Meres'ev certainly comes close to the model of bodily sacrifice that Pavka Korchagin represents: although shot down in the middle of a dense forest and surrounded by enemies, Meres'ev nevertheless manages to drag himself back to his camp, where his legs are amputated. Platonov's Albert Likhtenberg, though not precisely a socialist realist hero, surpasses Pavka in his desire to rid himself of his body bit by bit, finally feeding a Nazi policeman soup made from his flesh.

13 In Gladkov's Cement, Gleb manages to catch Sergei's brother, the one-armed man, who has been successfully resisting the new Bolshevik regime and sabotaging the attempt to restart the factory. In a sense, How the Steel Was Tempered resituates Cement's conflict by turning Pavka's own body into his bitter enemy. Pavka is both Gleb and the one-armed man, his Bolshevik will acting in direct opposition to his traitorous body.

14 “The exercise of discipline,” writes Foucault, “presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power, and in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible… . In the perfect camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power … The camp is the diagram of a power that acts by means of general visibility.“ Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York, 1979), 170–71Google Scholar.

15 Ostrovskii, Nikolai, Kak zakalialas’ stal’ (Moscow, 1982)Google Scholar. Ostrovsky, Nikolai, How theSteel Was Tempered, trans. Prokofieva, R., 2 vols. (Moscow, 1959)Google Scholar. Page numbers are given for both the Russian and the English versions. All translations are modified.

16 Ostrovskii, Kakzakalialas’ slat, 136,137; Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, 1:307 and 308.

17 Ibid., 137; 1:308-9.

18 Ibid. 138; 1:311. Interestingly, the next series of diary entries come from Rita Ustinovich, Pavka's comrade, love interest, and boss, who ends her diary after she is told (incorrectly) of Pavka's death from typhoid. “Pavel's death has opened my eyes to the truth,” she writes, “he was far dearer to me than I had diought. And now 1 shall close this diary. I doubt whether I shall ever return to it.” Ibid., 191; 2:106. With the main object of her observations removed, Rita abandons her work diary and asks to be transferred to Khar'kov.

19 Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas’ stal', 182; Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, 2:83 and 84.

20 Ibid., 182; 2:84.

21 This threat is repeated a few pages later when the men load Pavka's unconscious and feverish body onto a train. A fellow comrade, acting as a bodyguard, is told to use Pavka's gun to shoot anyone who tries to remove Pavka.

22 Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas’ stal', 187; Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, 2:95.

23 Ibid., 188; 2:96.

24 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 170..

25 Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas’ stal', 287; Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, 2:345.

26 “The super-ego owes its special position in the ego, or in relation to the ego, to a factor which must be considered from two sides: on the one hand it was still feeble, and on the other hand it is the heir to the Oedipus complex and has thus introduced the most momentous objects into the ego… . Although it is accessible to all late influences, it nevertheless preserves throughout life the character given to it by its derivation from the father-complex—namely, the capacity to stand apart from the ego and to master it. It is a memorial of the former weakness and dependence of the ego, and the mature ego remains subject to its domination… . Thus, the super-ego is always close to the id and can act as its representative vis-a-vis the ego. It reaches deep down into the id and for that reason is farther from consciousness than the ego is.” Freud, Sigmund, The Ego and the Id, trans. Strachey, James (New York, 1960), 48–49 Google Scholar.

27 Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas’ stal', 289; Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, 2:349. Reporting on this episode, Raia Ostrovskaia puts this even more clearly: Nikolai is said to have conducted “a meeting of the Politburo with his T about the treacherous behavior of his body” (zasedaniepolitbiuro so svoim “ia” o predatel'skom povedenii svoego tela). Ostrovskaia, R., Nikolai Ostrovskii (Moscow, 1988), 28 Google Scholar. Here we have an exact duplicate of the Freudian model of the psyche: the / (ego) is punished by the “Politburo” (superego) for the behavior of the body (id).

28 The first Political Bureau of the Communist Party, which lasted for only about two weeks from 10 (23) October 1917, to 24 October (6 November) 1917, was elected “to provide political leadership” during the revolution and was composed of seven members— Vladimir Lenin, Grigorii Zinov'ev, Lev Kamenev, Lev Trotskii, Iosif Stalin, G. Ia. Sokol'nikov, and Andrei Bubnov. The second incarnation of the Politburo was elected on 25 March 1919, by the plenum of the Central Committee. Lenin, Kamenev, Nikolai Krestinskii, Stalin, and Trotskii became full members, Nikolai Bukharin, Zinov'ev, and Mikhail Kalinin— candidate members. This version lasted until 1952, when Stalin replaced it with the Presidium. Ostrovskii's choice of organizations, therefore, is hardly incidental—Lenin and Stalin are his “superego.“

29 Ostrovskii, Kakzakalialas’ stal', 288; Ostrovsky, Hozu the Steel Was Tempered, 2:345-47.

30 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 201.

31 Kemp-Welch, A., Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 1928-39 (New York, 1991), 252–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Bloomington, 2000), 178 Google Scholar.

33 Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas’ stal', 141; Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, 1:316.

34 Ibid., 201; 2:130-31.

35 Ibid., 199; 2:127.

36 Ibid., 292; 2:357.

37 “In the film The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a cyborg who returns to contemporary Los Angeles from the future, with the intention of killing the mother of a future leader. The horror of this figure consists precisely in the fact that it functions as a programmed automaton who, even when all that remains of him is a metallic, legless skeleton, persists in his demand and pursues his victim with no trace of compromise or hesitation. The terminator is the embodiment of the drive, devoid of desire.” Zizek, , LookingAwry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 22 Google Scholar.

38 Quoted in Anninskii, Lev, “Kak zakalialas’ stal'” Nikolaia Ostrovskogo (Moscow, 1971), 10 Google Scholar.

39 Tregub, Semen, O Nikolae Ostrovskom (Moscow, 1938), 160 Google Scholar.

40 A foreign journalist for Pravda and Stalin's personal emissary to the Spanish Republic, Mikhail Kol'tsov was the author of Spanish (Civil War) Diaries (1938). Arrested on 12 December 1938, he was shot as a “spy” on 1 February 1940.

41 Kol'tsov, , “Muzhestvo,”Pravda (Moscow) 75 (17 March 1935): 4 Google Scholar.

42 Quoted in Tregub, Semen, Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovskii (1904-1936) (Moscow, 1950), 154 Google Scholar.

43 Anninskii, “Kak zakalialas’ stal',” 17.

44 Tolstoi, L. N., Anna Karenina, Sobraniesochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1963), 9:70 Google Scholar; Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina (New York, 1970), 446 Google Scholar. Translation modified.

45 On the museum/mausoleum, see Alexander Prokhorov, ‘“I Need Some Life- Assertive Character’ or How to Die in the Most Inspiring Pose: Bodies in the Stalinist Museum of Hammer & Sickle,” Studies in Slavic Cultures 1 (2000): 28-46.

46 Platonov, Andrei, Razmyshleniia chitatelia (Moscow, 1970), 97 Google Scholar.

47 Dobrenko, Evgenii, “Korchagin's Happiness,” The Making of the State Reader, trans. Savage, Jesse M. (Stanford, 1997), 289 Google Scholar. See also Dobrenko, , The Making of the State Writer trans. Savage, Jesse M. (Stanford, 2001)Google Scholar.

48 Pelevin, Viktor, Zhizn’ nasekomykh (Moscow, 1998)Google Scholar; Pelevin, Victor, Omon Ra, trans. Bromfield, Andrew (New York, 1996)Google Scholar. Also see the film directed by Sergei Livnev, Serp imolot (1994).

49 Pelevin, Zhizn’ nasekomykh, 48-49; Pelevin, OmonRa, 32-33.

50 “Power can reproduce itself only through some form of self-distance, by relying on the obscene disavowed rules and practices that are in conflict with its public norms,“ writes Zizek in Contingency, Hegemony, and Universality, “overidentifying with the explicit power discourse .. . taking power discourse at its (public) word, acting as if it really means what it explicitly says (and promises)—can be the most effective way of disturbing its smooth functioning.” Butler, Judith, Laclau, Ernesto, and Zizek, Slavoj, Contingency, Hegemony,and Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (New York, 2000), 218, 220Google Scholar (emphasis in the original). And again, speaking about the late-Yugoslav regime in Did SomebodySay Totalitarianism? Zizek writes, “A whole series of markers, delivered, between the lines, the injunction that such official exhortation was not to be taken too literally, that a cynical attitude toward the official ideology was what the regime actually wanted—the greatest catastrophe for the regime would have been for its own ideology to be taken seriously, and realized by its subjects.” Zizek, , Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (New York, 2001), 92 Google Scholar.

51 Ostrovskii, Kak zakalialas’ stal', 303; Ostrovsky, How the Steel Was Tempered, 2:383.