five minutes with brian boeck

Interview for Pushkin House by Andrew Jack (@AJack)

Where did your interest in Russia come from?

I didn’t have any connection growing up in rural Texas during the twilight of the Cold War, when Reagan had just pronounced evil empire. One night I started picking up these strange broadcasts on shortwave radio, catching the odd “net” or word ending “-ski” and I started teaching myself the language. I had to know what the evil empire was saying. It finally dawned on me this was a Baptist preacher in California broadcasting to Russia but it got me hooked. It made me realise the first impression when you are dealing with Russia is often the wrong one.

How did you become interested in Sholokhov?

I did my dissertation on the Don Cossacks and travelled a lot in that area. Generally it was assumed when you met people from there that you knew Sholokhov and had an opinion on him. I kept getting questions that I wasn’t capable of answering. I hadn’t read him: he had simply been erased almost as if there was a conspiracy of silence in the academic community. Then I vividly remember being in a Moscow subway in 1998 and reading an article over someone’s shoulder about the plagiarism allegations against him. That’s when I started thinking about him.

What was the importance of Quiet Don in Russia?

We think about the novel as one thing but it is several. The experience of reading in the Stalin years is very different from doing so subsequently. This was a work that first appeared as serialised fiction, and millions of Soviet citizens were waiting on the edge of their seats for the next instalment. Then it was banned. A book that millions had embraced suddenly disappeared for two years, before the chapters started being published again. It means something different for that generation of the 1920s and 30s: the question of whether it conformed to socialist realism, whether the main protagonist would become a Red Army man or continue with anti-Soviet forces. We know what happened since, but there was a lot of exciting uncertainty then.

Did you make new discoveries during your research?

A new reading of existing evidence was as important as the discovery of new evidence. So many things became available so quickly in the 1990s, including the memoirs of Sholokhov’s associates. The biggest revelation was the correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin. The book originated in a reading of those personal letters. With my graduate training in the early modern period I could bring a skill of close reading to new documents. There was so much insight and hidden dialogue in the publications of that era: even the layout of newspapers during the Great Terror was sending signals. I was trying to reassess an individual whose biography in Russia was hagiography, and who in the west was just dismissed.

What do you think of Quiet Don’s literary merits?

As a historian, I’ll evade that question. I guess the problem with serial fiction is you have an incentive to make things too long. If I were re-editing it, I would cut out 15-20 per cent. It’s a little too long for modern audiences. The first part had a lot of literary merit. As the project drew itself out, the last parts don’t shine as much. As for the criticisms of plagiarism which dogged Sholokhov all his life, it’s rather unfair. He produced a complicated collage, variegated tapestry of different sources, part his own work and part others’. I’d much rather advance the metaphor of surrogate parenting than literary marauding. He took something that would not have seen the light of day, and gave it light. Even if Quiet Don started out with a novel by another author, it’s something Sholokhov came to identify with and brought to a fruitful conclusion. By making it palatable, he gave it life and existence in Stalin’s Russia.

What was his relationship with Stalin?

The thing that troubled me a lot was whether he and Stalin had a friendship. There was a bond that developed, and Sholokhov had a remarkable sixth sense of walking right up to the line and not crossing over. He was willing to speak truth to power but not to generalise about the entire Soviet Union. That allowed him a high degree of candour in private letters. The reason Stalin listened is that Sholokhov stood his ground, finally someone was giving him an accurate picture of what was going on. Sholokhov was smart enough to not live in Moscow, the only leading intellectual who chose not to live in a major town. He was away from artistic intrigue, and while others vied for Stalin’s attention, Stalin couldn’t get enough of Sholokhov - he had an aloof availability.

What is your assessment of Sholokhov?

Sholokhov’s story is of a Stalinist who outlived Stalinism. The dictator loved the novel, but there was a crushing burden that came with being the favourite of the dictator. Finding that out changes his trajectory. The burden of the spotlight is something that is hard to live with. The terror is what changes him. He survives but the compromises he made make it hard for him to live in his own skin. After the Great Terror, his life was, as one reviewer of the book quipped one of venom and vodka. We want to imagine the dissidents all had clean hands and clean consciences under Stalin. In fact they were less bold, less brave and less frank than Sholokhov at the time. If he had only died in 1938 he probably would have had a long and interesting afterlife in western scholarship. The fact that he lived, wanted to serve the regime and became a bitter venomous figure in the late Khrushchev and Brezhnev era tainted his legacy.

How is Sholokhov being interpreted today in Russia?

Quiet Don is being read in schools again, there is a TV film serialising it, and Putin visited Sholokhov’s house. There is a re-embracing of him as a harbinger of Russian nationalism. A big part of Putin’s dealings with the past includes celebrating Soviet and Stalinist era people and achievements, and reconciling different eras of the Russian past, embracing both reds and whites as Sholokhov does in the novel. Our stereotype of Putin is Stierlitz on horseback, presenting an image of Russian masculinity. Sholokhov’s heroes are relevant again as Russians unrepentant of their Russianness. Putin probably had some residual fascination for Sholokhov after his Soviet era upbringing. In talking about his own break with the KGB he cited Sholokhov, although that passage was excised from the republication of his interviews.

What is your next book?

It is about the rivalry between a Russian agent and an American journalist, involving lies, forgery, libel and disinformation. Boris Brasol is a Russian Tsarist agent stranded in New York after the Revolution. He is the mastermind plotting behind the scenes with the forged Protocols of Zion, who is responsible for Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic campaign, the Red Scare and the battle for the US to not recognise the USSR. Herman Bernstein is the Jewish journalist who exposes his forgeries and thwarts his schemes.

Brian Boeck holds a PhD in Russian history from Harvard University and has taught Russian and Soviet history for over a decade at DePaul University. He is the author of Imperial Boundaries (Cambridge) and lives in Chicago, Illinois.