112 Bettina Kaibach
“burn up the fruits of human labor” in one strike. By condemning the bomb
primarily for its capacity to destroy human labor, he clearly situates the
destruction of Hiroshima within the ongoing ideological struggle between
capitalism and socialism, and he makes clear that while the fascist-capitalist
foe has remained essentially the same, his destructive power has reached an
altogether new dimension: by comparison with the American bomb, “the ovens
of Majdanek and Auschwitz pale into oblivion” (“Bledneiut pred neiu pechi/
Maidaneka i Osventsima!”). 19
In Roman Kim’s novel The Girl from Hiroshima (Devushka iz Khiroshimy),
published in the 1954 volume of Oktiabr’, the organ of the Soviet Writers’
Union, the link between the bombing of Hiroshima with the Nazi crimes
is not stated overtly but is insinuated throughout the novel, and it is specifically racism that connects Hitler’s henchmen with their American counterparts. 20 Under the American occupation after the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, the Japanese find themselves trapped in a racist regime that
does not distinguish between Blacks, Japanese, and Japanese Americans: “to
them,” one of the Japanese characters says, “[W]e are all colored” (“My te
zhe tsvetnye”). 21 It is when Kim describes the treatment of the radiation
victims by the occupation forces that the true nature of American racism
is exposed. In The Girl from Hiroshima, the facts about the racist underpinnings of the war against Japan and the encumbrance of proper treatment of
the Hiroshima victims by the American occupation forces are stretched to a
point that the Americans mutate into worthy successors to the Nazis. 22 The
American doctors, who examine the survivors of Hiroshima, bear a striking
resemblance to Dr. Mengele and his medical cronies. To them, the Japanese
radiation victims are no more than guinea pigs for potentially lethal medical
experiments. They strip their “patients,” who they treat with racist contempt,
both of their clothes and individuality: like in the Nazi camps, the Japanese
are given numbers instead of names. 23 At a time, when the topic of the Nazi
mass murder directed against the Jews was practically taboo for Soviet writers, Nazi racism was invoked in more vague terms to insinuate an evil affinity
between the anti-Semitism of the fascist foe and the racism directed against
Blacks and others in the United States.
A similar conflation of Nazi racism, American capitalism, and a culture of
death that first manifested itself in Auschwitz and allegedly culminates in the
willingness to use nuclear weapons for future mass killings can be found in
Il’ia Selvinskii’s play Reading Faust (Chitaia Fausta), written in 1947 and first
published in 1952. In this play, set during World War II in the laboratory of
a German nuclear physicist, the positive characters get to voice the opinion
that Auschwitz is a direct outcome of capitalism (“Kapitalizm–ėto Osventsim”)
and predict the merging of Nazi ideology with American commercial culture as a logical development. 24 For the soon-to-be-Americanized Nazis in
Selvinskii’s play, nuclear fission is but a means to further enhance their technological capacity for the mass killing of both Jews and Slavs (as Selvinskii
is careful to point out), which was demonstrated in the gas chambers of
“burn up the fruits of human labor” in one strike. By condemning the bomb
primarily for its capacity to destroy human labor, he clearly situates the
destruction of Hiroshima within the ongoing ideological struggle between
capitalism and socialism, and he makes clear that while the fascist-capitalist
foe has remained essentially the same, his destructive power has reached an
altogether new dimension: by comparison with the American bomb, “the ovens
of Majdanek and Auschwitz pale into oblivion” (“Bledneiut pred neiu pechi/
Maidaneka i Osventsima!”). 19
In Roman Kim’s novel The Girl from Hiroshima (Devushka iz Khiroshimy),
published in the 1954 volume of Oktiabr’, the organ of the Soviet Writers’
Union, the link between the bombing of Hiroshima with the Nazi crimes
is not stated overtly but is insinuated throughout the novel, and it is specifically racism that connects Hitler’s henchmen with their American counterparts. 20 Under the American occupation after the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, the Japanese find themselves trapped in a racist regime that
does not distinguish between Blacks, Japanese, and Japanese Americans: “to
them,” one of the Japanese characters says, “[W]e are all colored” (“My te
zhe tsvetnye”). 21 It is when Kim describes the treatment of the radiation
victims by the occupation forces that the true nature of American racism
is exposed. In The Girl from Hiroshima, the facts about the racist underpinnings of the war against Japan and the encumbrance of proper treatment of
the Hiroshima victims by the American occupation forces are stretched to a
point that the Americans mutate into worthy successors to the Nazis. 22 The
American doctors, who examine the survivors of Hiroshima, bear a striking
resemblance to Dr. Mengele and his medical cronies. To them, the Japanese
radiation victims are no more than guinea pigs for potentially lethal medical
experiments. They strip their “patients,” who they treat with racist contempt,
both of their clothes and individuality: like in the Nazi camps, the Japanese
are given numbers instead of names. 23 At a time, when the topic of the Nazi
mass murder directed against the Jews was practically taboo for Soviet writers, Nazi racism was invoked in more vague terms to insinuate an evil affinity
between the anti-Semitism of the fascist foe and the racism directed against
Blacks and others in the United States.
A similar conflation of Nazi racism, American capitalism, and a culture of
death that first manifested itself in Auschwitz and allegedly culminates in the
willingness to use nuclear weapons for future mass killings can be found in
Il’ia Selvinskii’s play Reading Faust (Chitaia Fausta), written in 1947 and first
published in 1952. In this play, set during World War II in the laboratory of
a German nuclear physicist, the positive characters get to voice the opinion
that Auschwitz is a direct outcome of capitalism (“Kapitalizm–ėto Osventsim”)
and predict the merging of Nazi ideology with American commercial culture as a logical development. 24 For the soon-to-be-Americanized Nazis in
Selvinskii’s play, nuclear fission is but a means to further enhance their technological capacity for the mass killing of both Jews and Slavs (as Selvinskii
is careful to point out), which was demonstrated in the gas chambers of