The Satanic Cosmic Force 111
Optimistic Tragedy: The Bombing of Hiroshima
and the Nuclear Threat in Official Soviet
Literature from the 1940s to the 1960s
In 1953, Vasilii Grossman wrote the story Abel (August 6th), his only work
devoted solely to the topic of nuclear warfare. The story depicts the fictitious crew of the Enola Gay as they experience the bombing of Hiroshima.
Grossman was by no means the first Soviet writer to address the topic. In
Soviet literature from the late 1940s onward, Hiroshima figured prominently
as a symbol of the American aggressors’ unscrupulous brutality. Grossman’s
choice of subject would thus suggest his text to be in keeping with the official
Soviet stance on nuclear war. Yet a close reading of Abel (August 6th) will
show that the story breached just about any taboo connected with the topic
of nuclear war. It is therefore not surprising that it was first published as late
as 1989.
Over decades, the treatment of the bombing of Hiroshima in official
Soviet literature remained relatively constant, with slight shifts of rhetoric
that mirrored the vacillations in the Soviet-American relationship as well as a
growing, if only cautiously admitted, awareness of the omnicidal potential of
nuclear war. 14 Not surprisingly, the fact that the Americans had been the first
(and so far only ones) to employ nuclear weapons lent itself to propagandistic
exploitation. The first literary responses to Hiroshima coincided with the
production of the Soviet nuclear bomb, which restored the balance of power
that in the Soviet perspective had been breached by the American demonstration of its nuclear prowess in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 15 In these texts,
the bombing of Hiroshima is submitted to a “striking ideologization” 16 that,
as will be shown below, abated somewhat during the Thaw but was never
fundamentally challenged.
Early literary treatments of Hiroshima were unanimous in that the strategic considerations of World War II, which, however spurious, prompted the
United States to the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, were ignored. (This did not
change over the years.) Instead, Hiroshima was viewed exclusively through
the lens of the Cold War as an alarming milestone in the United States’s
attempt to defeat socialism and subjugate the world to its power. At the same
time, in a somewhat paradoxical twist, this very Cold War appeared as but a
new culmination in the ongoing struggle against the forces of evil that, after
the defeat of fascist Germany, reemerged in the guise of American bankers
and diplomats, guided by the same vicious blend of capitalism, imperialism,
and racism that had instigated the Nazis to their crimes. In a particular “logic
of accumulation,” 17 Soviet writers established a direct link between the mass
murders of the Nazis and the bombing of Hiroshima. The poem Speech
to the United Nations (Slovo k ob”edinennym natsiiam) by Belorussian writer
Arkadii Kuleshov, which appeared in Novyi mir in 1948, provides a striking example. 18 Kuleshov denounces the chorus of atom-lovers (“atomshchiki”)
who boast about the power of a bomb that can wipe out an entire city and
Optimistic Tragedy: The Bombing of Hiroshima
and the Nuclear Threat in Official Soviet
Literature from the 1940s to the 1960s
In 1953, Vasilii Grossman wrote the story Abel (August 6th), his only work
devoted solely to the topic of nuclear warfare. The story depicts the fictitious crew of the Enola Gay as they experience the bombing of Hiroshima.
Grossman was by no means the first Soviet writer to address the topic. In
Soviet literature from the late 1940s onward, Hiroshima figured prominently
as a symbol of the American aggressors’ unscrupulous brutality. Grossman’s
choice of subject would thus suggest his text to be in keeping with the official
Soviet stance on nuclear war. Yet a close reading of Abel (August 6th) will
show that the story breached just about any taboo connected with the topic
of nuclear war. It is therefore not surprising that it was first published as late
as 1989.
Over decades, the treatment of the bombing of Hiroshima in official
Soviet literature remained relatively constant, with slight shifts of rhetoric
that mirrored the vacillations in the Soviet-American relationship as well as a
growing, if only cautiously admitted, awareness of the omnicidal potential of
nuclear war. 14 Not surprisingly, the fact that the Americans had been the first
(and so far only ones) to employ nuclear weapons lent itself to propagandistic
exploitation. The first literary responses to Hiroshima coincided with the
production of the Soviet nuclear bomb, which restored the balance of power
that in the Soviet perspective had been breached by the American demonstration of its nuclear prowess in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 15 In these texts,
the bombing of Hiroshima is submitted to a “striking ideologization” 16 that,
as will be shown below, abated somewhat during the Thaw but was never
fundamentally challenged.
Early literary treatments of Hiroshima were unanimous in that the strategic considerations of World War II, which, however spurious, prompted the
United States to the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, were ignored. (This did not
change over the years.) Instead, Hiroshima was viewed exclusively through
the lens of the Cold War as an alarming milestone in the United States’s
attempt to defeat socialism and subjugate the world to its power. At the same
time, in a somewhat paradoxical twist, this very Cold War appeared as but a
new culmination in the ongoing struggle against the forces of evil that, after
the defeat of fascist Germany, reemerged in the guise of American bankers
and diplomats, guided by the same vicious blend of capitalism, imperialism,
and racism that had instigated the Nazis to their crimes. In a particular “logic
of accumulation,” 17 Soviet writers established a direct link between the mass
murders of the Nazis and the bombing of Hiroshima. The poem Speech
to the United Nations (Slovo k ob”edinennym natsiiam) by Belorussian writer
Arkadii Kuleshov, which appeared in Novyi mir in 1948, provides a striking example. 18 Kuleshov denounces the chorus of atom-lovers (“atomshchiki”)
who boast about the power of a bomb that can wipe out an entire city and