The Satanic Cosmic Force 109
he envisions humanity on the path to wholesale nuclear destruction. Of the
four texts, only the novel For a Just Cause (Za pravoe delo) was published during Grossman’s lifetime. In the Soviet Union, both Life and Fate and the
two shorter texts appeared in print only in the late 1980s. 7 Yet Grossman’s
both subtle and scathing analysis of nuclearism testifies to an undercurrent
of thought that, although never allowed to enter the Soviet mainstream and
hidden from the Soviet readership at large, existed in a narrow segment of
society and certainly was not lost on the authorities.
In order to assess the audacity of Grossman’s banned writings on
nuclear technology and nuclear war, one has to read them against those
texts that could be published in the Soviet Union. According to Rosalind
Marsh, post-Stalin literature expressed “a remarkably consistent attitude
towards nuclear policy.” 8 From the end of World War II to Stalin’s death
in 1953, during the frantic race to catch up with the American nuclear
lead and produce a Soviet nuclear and then hydrogen bomb, the topic was
largely absent from the public debate. This changed from the mid-1950s
onward. The American nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll, the development of the neutron bomb, and the Kyshtym disaster led to a heightened
awareness of the effects of radiation and raised the specter of wholesale
nuclear destruction. 9 In alignment with Khrushchev’s doctrine of peaceful coexistence, Soviet writers were encouraged to address the nuclear
war threat and paths to its solution. Their task was an intricate one and
remained so until the end of the Soviet Union. Writers who took up
nuclear issues were expected to advocate peace without risking being
suspected of pacifism. They were supposed to denounce the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a heinous crime against humanity, while
playing down the effects of radiation just enough so as not to undermine
the status of Soviet nuclear science as panacea to social and political problems, and they had to evoke the horror of nuclear war without being suspected of defeatism. 10 It is not surprising that only in Science Fiction did
Soviet writers find a rare niche, where nuclear war could be imagined in a
manner relatively unrestrained by these considerations, due to the distant
settings and the fact that the genre itself was not deemed weighty enough
to merit full-fledged censorship. 11
Grossman wrote Abel (August 6th) in 1953 and The Sistine Madonna in 1954.
In 1960, he submitted Life and Fate for publication in the journal Znamia,
where the novel was rejected. Grossman’s writings on nuclear technology thus
span the transition from the relative silence of late Stalinism to the emergence
of the nuclear topic in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. Some of the thoughts
on nuclear war and nuclear physics in general that Grossman broached in
his unpublished writings would become commonplace in the literature of
the Thaw, albeit in a severely watered-down form: Hiroshima as a symbol
of the human capacity of destruction, an overall concern about nuclear war,
and skepticism as to science unfettered by ethical constraints. Yet Grossman
was unique in that he approached these issues under quite different auspices
he envisions humanity on the path to wholesale nuclear destruction. Of the
four texts, only the novel For a Just Cause (Za pravoe delo) was published during Grossman’s lifetime. In the Soviet Union, both Life and Fate and the
two shorter texts appeared in print only in the late 1980s. 7 Yet Grossman’s
both subtle and scathing analysis of nuclearism testifies to an undercurrent
of thought that, although never allowed to enter the Soviet mainstream and
hidden from the Soviet readership at large, existed in a narrow segment of
society and certainly was not lost on the authorities.
In order to assess the audacity of Grossman’s banned writings on
nuclear technology and nuclear war, one has to read them against those
texts that could be published in the Soviet Union. According to Rosalind
Marsh, post-Stalin literature expressed “a remarkably consistent attitude
towards nuclear policy.” 8 From the end of World War II to Stalin’s death
in 1953, during the frantic race to catch up with the American nuclear
lead and produce a Soviet nuclear and then hydrogen bomb, the topic was
largely absent from the public debate. This changed from the mid-1950s
onward. The American nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll, the development of the neutron bomb, and the Kyshtym disaster led to a heightened
awareness of the effects of radiation and raised the specter of wholesale
nuclear destruction. 9 In alignment with Khrushchev’s doctrine of peaceful coexistence, Soviet writers were encouraged to address the nuclear
war threat and paths to its solution. Their task was an intricate one and
remained so until the end of the Soviet Union. Writers who took up
nuclear issues were expected to advocate peace without risking being
suspected of pacifism. They were supposed to denounce the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a heinous crime against humanity, while
playing down the effects of radiation just enough so as not to undermine
the status of Soviet nuclear science as panacea to social and political problems, and they had to evoke the horror of nuclear war without being suspected of defeatism. 10 It is not surprising that only in Science Fiction did
Soviet writers find a rare niche, where nuclear war could be imagined in a
manner relatively unrestrained by these considerations, due to the distant
settings and the fact that the genre itself was not deemed weighty enough
to merit full-fledged censorship. 11
Grossman wrote Abel (August 6th) in 1953 and The Sistine Madonna in 1954.
In 1960, he submitted Life and Fate for publication in the journal Znamia,
where the novel was rejected. Grossman’s writings on nuclear technology thus
span the transition from the relative silence of late Stalinism to the emergence
of the nuclear topic in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. Some of the thoughts
on nuclear war and nuclear physics in general that Grossman broached in
his unpublished writings would become commonplace in the literature of
the Thaw, albeit in a severely watered-down form: Hiroshima as a symbol
of the human capacity of destruction, an overall concern about nuclear war,
and skepticism as to science unfettered by ethical constraints. Yet Grossman
was unique in that he approached these issues under quite different auspices