In this blog post, I’ll share my thoughts on ‘Chebengur’ and explore the world of resistance and love toward modernity that this work presents.
I first read ‘Chebengur’ in 1988, when I was in high school. Although the full text of ‘Chebenkur’ had already been published abroad in 1978, it was not until 1988—when censorship within the Soviet Union had eased somewhat due to the Perestroika policy—that ‘Chebenkur’, completed in 1928, finally reached readers.
During the Perestroika era, a flood of critical writings about the Soviet system—which had previously been blocked by censorship—began to emerge. In March 1988, I first came across the phrase “Publication of a previously banned literary work: ‘Chevengur’” in the literary magazine ‘Druzhba Narodov’ (“Friendship of the Peoples”), to which my family subscribed at the time. Assuming this work, too, had likely remained unpublished for a long time, I picked up the book.
But to my surprise, once I started reading ‘Chebengur’, I couldn’t put it down. I read it constantly—day and night at home, secretly during school classes, on the subway, and even in the bathroom. I often found myself crying as I read, and from that time until now, this book has served as a kind of personal Bible to me. Whenever I faced difficulties, lost my will to live, or was sick, reading this book always brought me comfort.
The reason I approach ‘Cheben-Gur’ with this attitude is that this work was qualitatively different from the simple critiques that commonly appeared during the Perestroika era. This novel does not stop at criticizing the outward appearance of the Soviet Union or the revolution; it reveals the deepest roots of that world.
Adults living in the modern world are aware of only a very limited reality. In this reality, life and death are separated into completely different realms, and death is concealed as an object of fear. Furthermore, the boundary between “self” and “other” is distinct, so when encountering others, people calculate and maintain a certain distance. Humans and objects are categorically different, and humans view the rest of the world as “resources” to be rationally utilized as needed. Each individual’s actions are generally calculated with the aim of convenience and the enhancement of “happiness.” In this world, where stability and convenience are equated with happiness, it is questionable whether true happiness is even possible.
However, upon opening ‘Chebengur’, the reader enters a completely different world. This world differs from the modern world centered on distance and calculation, and it is difficult to view it as the world of adults. In a sense, the novel’s perspective is close to that of a child, and a unique world rooted in a child’s mind unfolds. In this world, the boundary between life and death is unclear.
For example, the fisherman—the father of the protagonist, Sasha Dvanoff—“thought of death, just as one might think of another village under the sky, or another village on the cold lake bed.” To him, the afterlife was not a source of fear but an object of familiar interest. Ultimately, driven by that curiosity, he decided to drown himself, choosing to remain in the warm, womb-like waters of the lake. His son, who had also experienced frustration with communism—that is, the construction of a utopian society—enters the lake to meet his father in that world of goodwill. For them, life and death are not a stage for fear or competition, but a venue for practicing love.
In this childlike world of love, the modern individual—cut off from others and concerned only with his own “happiness”—cannot exist. For the positive characters in ‘Chebengur’, there is no distance between “self” and “other.” Kopunkin, the wandering knight of the revolution and a modern-day Don Quixote, thinks first and foremost of his beloved Rosa Luxemburg even as he dies in defeat during his final battle.
He regards the revolutionary martyrs as extensions of himself, and, thinking of them, finds happiness in walking the path of asceticism—rather than seeking stability or comfort—until he falls in battle.
For Sasha Dvanoff, the path leading into the lake is not so much a path to death as it is a path to becoming eternally one again with his father’s body, with which he had always been one in his dreams. “In truth, his father was still there—his bones, the remnants of his living flesh, the sweat-soaked fragment of his shirt, the very homeland of all life and friendship. And there, in that narrow place where he would never again have to part from anyone, a place that awaited the return of the blood that had once flowed from his father’s body for his son’s sake with eternal friendship, awaited Alexander.” The scent of his father’s sweat-soaked shirt transcends the boundaries between individuals, uniting the two into an inseparable whole.
Furthermore, the love depicted in ‘Chebengur’ does not necessarily refer only to identification among humans. The characters regard machines as extensions of humanity and cherish them as if they were living beings. Work is a time for communicating with the machines he loves. Just as a child talks to a toy, Sasha’s foster father, Zahar Pavlovich, converses with locomotives and all kinds of machinery.
“Even during his lunch break, Zahar Pavlovich never took his eyes off the locomotive, quietly experiencing his love for it. He brought many machine parts—such as bolts, old valves, and pipes—back to his quarters. He lined them up on the table and stacked them high, absorbed in gazing at them without ever feeling lonely. Zahar Pavlovich was not lonely, for to him, the machines were people, and they continually stimulated his senses, thoughts, and desires.”
In this way, a world where even the machines of reified labor feel like organic beings and become spiritualized is a mythical space-time distinctly different from modern reality—one that seems to be understood only through a child’s psychology. The reason this world resonates with people’s hearts is likely because we feel a sense of lack in modernity or in the reality of adulthood, and harbor an impulse to return to childhood, when the boundaries between “self” and “other” were blurred. This should not be criticized merely as regressive psychology. A legendary space-time where objects, people, animals, and plants are indistinguishable is the source of human creativity, and when we return there, we regain the power to create and the power to love the entire world.
It is precisely this code of love that connects the surreal world of ‘Chebengur’ to the historical phenomenon of revolution. As the novel shows, revolution can be brutal, but its purpose is to create a world of love woven together by mutual care. This new world represents a move away from capitalist modernity and resonates with the novel’s quasi-mythical space-time.
The painful process of creating this new world is difficult to undertake unless one is a revolutionary who retains a childlike attachment to all things. Revolution demands enormous sacrifices for the future, and those capable of enduring such sacrifices without complaint generally possess “childlike” psychological traits, much like the characters in ‘Chebengur’. This brings to mind the biblical saying, “Unless you become like a child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” In that sense, the quasi-mythical space-time of ‘Chebengur’ can be read as a stage of resistance against inhuman capitalist modernity.
Just as Chebengur—the utopian commune in the novel—collapsed, so too did the Soviet Revolution of around 1928 gradually degenerate into a Stalinist bureaucratic state.
So, were the hardships and deaths of countless popular fighters like Sasha Dvanofna and Kofunkin in vain? Not at all.
To borrow the language of ‘Chebengur’, as long as they are waiting for us underground and watching over us from the lake, the dream of a world free from exploitation and discrimination—where all things can become one in love—will endure forever.
Fortunately, readers of the Korean edition—the first to be published in East Asia—will now be able to experience the power of that dream for themselves as they read this work. Could it be that this Earth continues to exist precisely because this dream is alive?
