Abstract

Among anecdotes about Stalin published by A. Krikmann there are several variations of the story “The State Leaders criticize the poem Mukha-mukha, tsokotukha” (Krikmann 2004: No. 136). This anecdote about Chukovsky’s tale and the reaction to it of different Soviet and Russian leaders from Lenin to Putin is probably based on actual events that took place in the 1920s. Its direct source can be found in the stories about literary misfortune of this tale (as well as other tales written by Chukovsky) that was considered ideologically wrong by the Soviet censors. Most likely, they were told by Chukovsky himself who described to the circle of friends how he and some other writers (for instance, Marshak) had to plead with the officials to prove that there was no ideological implications. These stories were projected into one of anecdote’s models based on cumulative effect (the first version). It is significant that the Soviet leaders’ reaction to the tale as it is presented in the anecdote perfectly corresponds with the official criticism recorded by Chukovsky.
      This interrelation between historical reality and the narrative mechanics of anecdote is further demonstrated by another version of this story where Chukovsky is replaced by Mikhalkov (the second version). This replacement has a definite semantic motivation (which should not be mistaken for a sufficient explanation why it occurs) and, at the same time, it follows the logic of folklore where the actions of one character can be easily transferred on another, provided that they both belong to the same category of historical (or mythological) personae. In our case this process is facilitated by the fact that the authors who write for children are less individualized in public consciousness than the ones who work in ‘serious’ genres. Replacing Chukovsky by Mikhalkov, the anecdote draws on such aspects of the latter reputation as a plagiarist and a cynical writer of the Soviet hymn that he kept changing according to political demand. It is a unique occasion when a Soviet writer became the hero of an anecdote cycle even with a limited (mostly professional) circulation. Thanks to Mikhalkov’s reputation the second version of the anecdote has a different message that the first one.

 Among the anecdotes about Stalin published by A. Krikmann, there are several versions of the plot “The leaders of the country criticise the poem “Mukha Tsokhotukha” (“The Buzzing Fly”, or “Fly-a-Buzz-Buzz”)” (Krikmann 2004: No. 136). It should be pointed out that despite their structural compliance with the conventions of the anecdote genre, these texts differ from similar forms of modern folklore in that they are longer, consist of more sections (4 to 7) and exhibit a higher degree of compositional complexity (see the table in the Annex). In all these cases, their structure is a reverse of the pattern known as “The house that Jack built” in which every new episode involves a deletion of the last section rather than an addition of a new one, as, for example, in the following nursery rhyme: “On a ship called POBEDA [victory]  / after dinner [OBEDA] / there happened a BEDA [a misfortune]:/ EDA [food] was stolen. / Did you do that? DA [yes]” (here, however, the front section rather than the tail one is cut off). I. Amroyan (2005: 139–140) terms this device “decumulation”. It is quite rare in oral tradition.

The first version recorded in 1983 should most likely be considered the starting point. Its thematic source was apparently the story of persecution of K. Chukovsky’s tales in the 1920s. The censorship crackdown began as early as 1922, soon after the creation of the Glavlit (The Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs). The following line in “Moidodyr”  [“Wash ‘Em Clean”, literally “Wash till holes”] was edited out: “Oh, God, what has happened? Why is everything around us…” (Chukovsky 1991: 219, 496). Later, the Glavsotsvos (The Main Committee on Social Upbringing and Political Education of the People’s Comissariat for Education) denounced this tale as “an insult to chimney sweeps”. A group of 29 writers supported this charge and wrote an open letter to Maxim Gorky about that. The tale “Crocodile” was also criticized as an “allegorical representation of Kornilov’s mutiny,” although this work has appeared a year before the actual event. In 1925, the members of the Komsomol ( The Communist Union of Youth) came up with the initiative to replace in the children’s performance of the “Moidodyr” line “And the dirty chimney sweeps…,” which was presumably hurting the feelings of chimney sweeps, with the words “And everyone who is dirty...” (Chukovsky 1991: 332). In 1927, the GUS (The State Academic Council of the People’s Comissariat for Education) – and personally N.K. Krupskaya who was the chair of the children’s literature committee -- banned two poems, “Doctor Aybolit” [Doctor Oh, it hurts] and “The Crocodile”. Krupskaya’s scathing article in the “Pravda” newspaper about Chukovsky’s “Crocodile” (1928) precipitated a total prohibition on the publication of all of his children’s books. The ban was followed by a full-scale campaign against Chukovsky himself and everything he represented: “We should point our rifles at Chukovsky and the likes of him because they promote the petit-bourgeois ideology […] Chukovsky never mentions […] the organization of childhood by means of collectives of children…” (Sverdlova 1928: 92–93); his books breed superstition and fears (Resolution 1929: 74), etc.

The most severe ideological attacks were directed against “Mukha Tsokotukha” – a tale particularly favoured by the author. Even 20 years later, remembering his early poetic might in a later hour of depression, he placed “Mukha Tsokotukha” before his other works (Chukovsky 1994: 181). “The bloodiest battle was over “Mukha Tsokotukha”: “a bourgeois book, Philistinism with its preserves, the merchant’s way of life, a wedding, a name day, a mosquito dressed as a hussar…” According to the Gublit (The Provincial Department of Literary and Publishing Affairs), “the fly is the princess in disguise and the mosquito is the prince in disguise”, “the illustrations are indecent: the mosquito is portrayed standing too close to the fly”, “she is smiling way too teasingly”, “they are flirting” (Chukovsky 1991: 344, 450). The tale undermines children’s faith in the triumph of the collective, expresses sympathy for the kulaks’ [affluent peasants’] ideology (“The horned beetles are wealthy peasants”), praises “petit-bourgeois virtues and the accumulation of wealth,” and (together with “The Giant Roach” and “The Crocodile”) provides “false image of the animal and insect worlds” (Resolution 1929: 74). The critics adopted the following slogan: let us protect our children from alien influences! We should replace misleading fictional tales with simple and true stories about real life and real nature.

In the anecdote the accusations levelled at “Mukha Tsokotukha” conform to the letter and spirit of the above-mentioned political-ideological charges (themselves quite anecdotal): “Why go to the market and not to the cooperative? This is a political error (spoken with the characteristic Lenin’s burr)”; “We do not have money lying around on the streets (spoken with the Stalin’s characteristic Georgian accent)”; “If everyone walks across fields, there will be no corn in our country”; “We are counting every single gram of gold, and you have a fly flitting around with a gilded tummy”). To all intents and purposes, the anecdotal tradition views this tale castigated by high-ranking Soviet officials as “unpleasing to the ruling elite” and as “being in need of rehabilitation”.

In his diaries (1991: 344, 406, 411,426–427), Chukovsky described his attempts to cut through the red tape. He had to turn to publishers and various censorship authorities (Gublit, GUS, etc.), to A.V. Lunacharsky (he “introduced us trotting out the usual cliché to the girl: ‘Do you now who that is? It’s Chukovsky.’ It turned out that the family of the People’s Commissar of that very department which was supposed to battle against Chukovsky was also infected with that malady) and, finally, to Krupskaya. Her scathing article appeared in the “Pradva” newspaper soon afterwards.

In fact, there is a strong probability that all these episodes could have been transformed into the plot in question after having been mapped onto the productive matrix of jokes about Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev… (Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev…; Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev…, etc. (see, e.g., Krikmann 2004: No. 2)) within the framework of which each leader entering the narrative fabric behaves in a way consistent with his folkloric image.

 Of course, half a century separating the anecdote from the prototypical events does set certain limitations on determining the nature of the relationship between them. The record has been dated at 1983, and the appearance of the Secretary General Andropov in the final plot section supports this dating, at least as far as the latest version of the anecdote is concerned. It is not ruled out that in the 1940s the memory of these events could have been reawakened by the resumed persecutions of Chukovsky’s tales following the publication of the 14.08.1946 decree of the Central Committee regarding the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” (Pradva, 21.08.1946). This time, the criticism was targeted at the tale about Bibigon (1945): “absurd and bizarre incidents […] naturalism, primitivism” (Krushinsky 1946).

However, the most likely source of the legend that gave rise to the anecdote was Chukovsky himself who at different times used to tell his acquaintances about the circumstances surrounding the official persecution of “Mukha Tsokotukha”, the attacks on which were particularly painful for him  (“my most cheerful, most melodious, most felicitous work” (Chukovsky 1991: 344)). The anecdote could have emerged in the way indicated above in the process of further folklorization of the initial legend.

Let us consider the next version (No.2) recorded twenty years later – in the year of Mikhalkov’s 90^th anniversary (i.e. in 2003).

This version does not mention Lenin, but the succession of Kremlin rulers is extended to include Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin. It is obvious that Mikhalkov could not go to Lenin, but the point here was hardly to try and avoid that kind of anachronisms. They are excusable in an anecdote, for example: “Chukovsky comes to Andropov” (No. 1; Chukovsky’s life and Andropov’s tenure as Secretary General did not coincide in temporal terms), or: “Stalin died, so did Chukovsky. Mikhalkov comes to Khrushchev alone” (No.2; in fact, Chukovsky died 16 years later than Stalin did and, thus, was a contemporary of not only Khrushchev, but Brezhnev as well).

The replacement of one character with another is a natural process in folklore: the actions of one person are attributed to another who belongs to the same “class” of historical (or mythological) figures. In the given case, this process is facilitated by the fact that the authors of children’s poems are generally perceived as being less individualized and are, consequently, less stick to one’s memory than the authors of “high” literature. This is substantiated by the existence of version No. 3 in which the poet is unnamed, but the text of “Mukha Tsokotukha” is retained (without it, the anecdote would not have been possible). “It is impossible to recognize whether it is Marshak, or Mikhalkov, or Barto, or a dozen of second-rate men of letters and a hundred of third-rate ones,” observes a critic likening such works to “authorless” poetry; Chukovsky, though, according to him, did not belong to the above-mentioned plethora of writers (Yakovlev 2001: 6).

Supposedly, the deletion of Chukovsky and the introduction of Mikhalkov instead resulted from the subsequent development of the topic of the anecdote ending with the phrase: “Chukovsky was completely forgotten.” This deletion has a much deeper semantic motivation behind it than the mere variation mechanism at work and has to do with the persona of anecdotal Mikhalkov who now becomes the main character in the plot in question. In other words, the replacement of Chukovsky with Mikhalkov and not with, say, Marshak or Barto is not accidental. It is here that the story about the rulers reading “Mukha Tsokotukha” acquires certain additional, although not immediately obvious, meanings.

First of all, it should be pointed out that anecdotes about Sergey Mikhalkov constitute a relatively rare case in which the protagonist of the anecdote sequence is not a statesman (for instance, the leader of the country like Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev) or a popular film character (Chapaev, Stirlitz), but a man of letters, albeit a very famous one. Mikhalkov is unique in this respect: apparently, he is the only Soviet writer who had the honour of becoming the subject of a whole series of anecdotes. Two reservations should be noted, however. Firstly, these texts were known almost exclusively in literary circles, outside of which they were simply incomprehensible. Secondly, in terms of both content and structure, they are very much akin to a “historical anecdote,” i.e. to a short informal account of an incident in the life of a particular character, often suffused with humorous overtones. In this sense, they constitute a certain intermediate form between the historical anecdote and the modern folkloric joke.

Anecdotes about Mikhalkov cannot be understood outside literary circles because they are based on the long-established reputation of this writer (see, e.g.: Goryaeva 1998: 279, 281; Kaverin 1989: 416–417; Koval 1998: 256, 259) and are classifiable as inside knowledge not only in oral tradition (“hearsay”), but also in literary criticism and even in certain works devoted to the theory and history of literature. The characteristics that make up his folklorized image have not lost their relevance in the course of many decades and constitute the motivational backbone of the anecdotes.

Mikhalkov as an epigone and a plagiarist. “In the beginning, the children’s writer M<ikhalkov> was an epigone of S. Marshak and K. Chukovsky” (Kazak 1996: 265). He began his career as a playwright by dramatizing “The Prince and the Pauper” by Mark Twain (Mikhalkov 1938), the first edition of which featured the following acknowledgement on the title page: Sergey Mikhalkov. Tom Canty. A Comedy in 3 Acts and 6 Scenes (inspired by Mark Twain). It is fully reflective of the Soviet tradition of belittling the authors of re-written literary proto-texts (A. Tolstoy, L. Lagin and others). The issue of plagiarism is particularly relevant in respect of the USSR anthem. “A hearing of the new version of the anthem soon took place. This time, the anthem contained a direct plagiarism from the welcome address of “the Belarusian people” to the ruler at the XVIII party congress: “We procured our armour in battles…” etc.” (Antonov-Ovseenko (quoted in Shchuplov 2000); here and hereafter my expanded spacing – S. N.). In the 1950s it was rumoured that Mikhalkov exploited “literary slaves” who helped him create his dramatic works. Nowadays, this reputation is still alive. For example, Mikhail Antonov, a journalist on the Kultura radio station, starts his presentation of the DVD called “New Adventures of Puss in Boots” (27.07.2006, 20.15) with the following words: “Is it correct to call Mikhalkov a plagiarist?”.

Mikhalkov edges Chukovsky out of the list of leading children’s authors and becomes his antithesis. Chukovsky’s diary of 1947 contains the following entry: “They used to say: “Chukovsky, Marshak and others”, then: “Marshak, Chukovsky and others”, then: “Marshak, Mikhalkov, Chukovsky and others”, then: “Marshak, Mikhalkov, Barto, Kassil and others” (Chukovsky 1994: 181). The existence of such rolls was a fact of literary life at that time (“Who used to be a real hit? /Lev Kassil, Marshak, Barto. /Who shoaled in the editing houses? /Lev Kassil, Barto, Marshak”). Unfortunately, I do not remember the author of these humorous and, probably, anti-Semitic verses, so I will just recite them from memory.) Another “fact” was the marginalization of Chukovsky after the persecution campaign of 1946. The writing trade was well aware of that, sharing this knowledge by word of mouth. Mikhalkov was, of course, by far not the only one who edged Chukovsky out. However, as can be concluded from the above-mentioned diary entry (made – and this is quite important – before the crackdown on cosmopolitism), Mikhalkov came higher on that list, and then, as the next step, Chukovsky’s surname was excluded. One can be almost certain that the entry features extracts from various critiques, speeches, etc. rather than random combinations of names. In this sense, it should be quite representative.

Mikhalkov’s play “Laughter and Tears” (1945; in later editions knows as “A Funny Dream” as well as the screenplay to the 1958 film “New Adventures of Puss in Boots” based on the same plot) contains a parody of Chukovsky. In the play, Krivello/Brigella, a secret villain “of the suit of spades,” is tormenting an unhappy prince with his horrible stories: “Terrible-looking monsters / caught a poor child / and started beating him up mercilessly / and started smothering and drowning him” – cf. Chukovsky: “Bring me, you animals, your children / I am going to eat them tonight for dinner / […] No mother will ever agree to give / her beloved child / to a voracious monster / so that he could torment the poor baby!” (“The Giant Roach”); “The ugly stuffed monster / bared its teeth / [...] The monster jumped up to her / and grabbed poor Lyalechka...” (“The Crocodile”). Let us recap the old charges leveled against Chukovsky’s tales: “breeding superstition and fear” (Resolution 1929: 74). It should be noted that Mikhalkov’s play about the secret villain Brigella and his horrible stories appears shortly before another eruption of persecution against Chukovsky, and this can hardly be viewed as poor coincidence (for more detail, see Stroganov 2005).  

The text written by Mikhalkov with a co-author and sent for approval to Stalin can be nothing else but the anthem of the USSR. The history of the creation of the USSR anthem (1943) is one of the central themes in Mikhalkov’s “anecdotal epos”. Interestingly, Mikhalkov himself authored some of those versions (Zhovtis 1995: 18–21; Shchuplov 2000; Soboleva 2005: 13). The submission of “Mukha Tsokotukha” for consideration in turn to Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin, reveals not only the motif of the hero’s immortality (“akin to a character in the Russian folktale […] Mikhalkov” (Poryadina 2002: 287)), but also the farcical version of the plot about repeated opportunistic alterations of the anthem (“He owes his career success to the fact that he adjusted children’s poems in accordance with the shifts of the party line, be it Stalin’s, Khrushchev’s, Brezhnev’s or Gorbachev’s rule…” (Kazak 1996: 265)). This is indirectly substantiated by the ending of the anecdote (awards granted by Putin), as well as by the anecdotal Yeltsin’s remark (in response to another attempt to publish “Mukha Tsokotukha”): “We are in no need of poets” (No. 2) – cf. “At the end of 1993, the President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin issued a decree that M. I. Glinka’s piano piece without lyrics called “The Patriotic Song” musically edited by B. Diev should be adopted as the anthem of the Russian Federation […] As a result, the Russian anthem existed without lyrics for more than 10 years”  (Soboleva 2005: 19).

The elimination of the co-author (“Mikhalkov alone […] Chukovsky has been forgotten”). The legend has it: “In half a year they [the authors of the lyrics of the anthem] were summoned to Stalin. Then, there were six more meetings without Registan, because Stalin said that he would take care of the political aspect himself …” (Shchuplov 2000). In reality, Mikhalkov is the sole author of only the last version of the anthem (the so-called “Putin’s” version of 2000). In Brezhnev’s version of 1977 the name of (the by that time late) Registan was still retained (Soboleva 2005: 19). It is possible to detect a certain correspondence between the motifs of getting rid of a co-author (Registan in the story with the anthem, Chukovsky in the anecdote about “Mukha Tsokotukha”) in the apotheosis of Mikhalkov’s oeuvre during Putin’s rule.

To sum up, the literary anecdote about “Mukha Tsokotukha” which the author submits for consideration to the Soviet rulers (from Lenin to Putin) is apparently based on the actual literary situation of the 1920s. Its direct sources seem to be the accounts of the rejection of this work (as well as of other Chukovsky’s tales) by the Soviet ideological authorities as well as the accounts of the attempts of the author himself and some other men of letters (Marshak in particular) to cut through the red tape in order to solve the matter. The reshaping of such accounts occurs within the framework of the productive anecdote pattern: the Kremlin rulers are successively introduced into the narration and figure there in accordance with their established anecdotal images. The cumulative plot that thus arises (version 1) does not run counter to the mechanism of creation of the modern folkloric anecdote, but is somewhat more complex and cumbersome than the usual oral forms.

The semantic motivation behind the replacement of Chukovsky with Mikhalkov in the given plot is just as strong (version 2). Again, it happens in total compliance with the folkloric variation mechanism, although cannot be accounted for exclusively by it. The replacement occurs as an action within the plot and is quite important in itself: the theme brought up in the second episode (“Mikhalkov alone…”) is resolved only in the very end (“and Chukovsky was forgotten”). Apparently, the traits invariably attributed to Mikhalkov in literary circles and making up his folklorized image are actualized here providing the motivational backbone: Mikhalkov as a plagiarist, a court poetaster re-writing his verses to suit the fickle political climate (interestingly, it was precisely due to this fact that Mikhalkov’s works underwent at least two censorship attacks: in 1947 for mentioning Tito “in a positive context” and in 1960 for mentioning him in a negative one (Blum 2003: No. 227, 326)); Mikhalkov as a cynical careerist addressing his texts to the powerful and through that pursuing his own goals. It is this reputation that makes Mikhalkov the hero of a whole anecdote series and gives Version 2 of the plot in question an entirely new resonance as compared to Version 1.

 Annex

References

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