114 Bettina Kaibach
of inevitable war and Georgii Malenkov’s theory that World War III would
result in the final downfall of capitalism. 29 Writers on Hiroshima oscillated
as to the role of the Soviet Union with respect to nuclear weapons in this
prospective war. More often than not, in Soviet literature on Hiroshima, it is
exclusively the Americans and their cronies who insidiously resort to nuclear
bombs, while the Soviet Union fights with fairness, relying on the strength
of its ideological superiority, and uses nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes. In the above-mentioned Speech to the United Nations, Arkadii
Kuleshov appeals to the United Nations to ban all nuclear arms and proclaims
socialism to be the true nuclear weapon. Roman Kim, in the novel The Girl
from Hiroshima, implicitly employs the cliché of American cowardice, which,
as Christoph Garstka has shown, was customary in postwar Soviet literature
and rested on the idea that while during World War II the Soviets fought in
honest combat, the American military “preferred to hide behind the Red
Army just like it was now hiding behind the bomb.” 30 Kim’s novel leaves
no doubt that Hiroshima is but the beginning of a universal war between
the American fascists and the insulted and oppressed of the world. Both the
development of the hydrogen bomb and the human experiments that the
American Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) is alleged to be carrying out with the Japanese radiation victims can mean but one thing: the
Americans are preparing for nuclear war on a hitherto unimaginable scale
in order to grant their racist-capitalist regime everlasting dominance of the
world. The novel’s heroine Sumiko, herself a survivor of Hiroshima, and her
leftist friends embark on an almost bare-handed partisan battle against the
atom-bomb-carrying “Ame” and their Japanese collaborators, a battle that
is depicted as a class struggle, as an anti-imperialist war of liberation, and as
a fight for world peace. The passages when the Japanese youngsters attack
their “fascist” foe read like any combat scene from the average Soviet socialist realist novel about the “Great Patriotic War,” seasoned with some extra
ingredients from the spy genre to fully accommodate the taste of the Cold
War readership.
As the examples show, in Soviet literature, nuclearization is frequently
presented as a phenomenon exclusively pertaining to the American enemy. If
the Soviet nuclear program is alluded to at all, the implicit threat to the ideological foe is clad in a decidedly unmartial posture. In the poem Your strength
(Tvoia sila) published in 1949, the year that the first Soviet nuclear bomb was
produced, Evgenii Dolmatovskii strikes the tone of an idyllic lullaby: when
a baby girl is awakened by a nightly shock wave from the distant Taiga,
her father soothingly hints at an unspeakable explosive of unprecedented
power, tested by Soviet geologists for the sole purpose of granting the child
sleep unharmed by an enemy that lurks behind the borders of the socialist
empire. 31 In Il’ia Selvinskii’s above-mentioned play Reading Faust, the Soviet
Union uses the peaceful atom to fulfill its vision of a just and prosperous
society, while the Nazis are preparing for a nuclear war to be carried out by
their American successors. 32
of inevitable war and Georgii Malenkov’s theory that World War III would
result in the final downfall of capitalism. 29 Writers on Hiroshima oscillated
as to the role of the Soviet Union with respect to nuclear weapons in this
prospective war. More often than not, in Soviet literature on Hiroshima, it is
exclusively the Americans and their cronies who insidiously resort to nuclear
bombs, while the Soviet Union fights with fairness, relying on the strength
of its ideological superiority, and uses nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes. In the above-mentioned Speech to the United Nations, Arkadii
Kuleshov appeals to the United Nations to ban all nuclear arms and proclaims
socialism to be the true nuclear weapon. Roman Kim, in the novel The Girl
from Hiroshima, implicitly employs the cliché of American cowardice, which,
as Christoph Garstka has shown, was customary in postwar Soviet literature
and rested on the idea that while during World War II the Soviets fought in
honest combat, the American military “preferred to hide behind the Red
Army just like it was now hiding behind the bomb.” 30 Kim’s novel leaves
no doubt that Hiroshima is but the beginning of a universal war between
the American fascists and the insulted and oppressed of the world. Both the
development of the hydrogen bomb and the human experiments that the
American Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) is alleged to be carrying out with the Japanese radiation victims can mean but one thing: the
Americans are preparing for nuclear war on a hitherto unimaginable scale
in order to grant their racist-capitalist regime everlasting dominance of the
world. The novel’s heroine Sumiko, herself a survivor of Hiroshima, and her
leftist friends embark on an almost bare-handed partisan battle against the
atom-bomb-carrying “Ame” and their Japanese collaborators, a battle that
is depicted as a class struggle, as an anti-imperialist war of liberation, and as
a fight for world peace. The passages when the Japanese youngsters attack
their “fascist” foe read like any combat scene from the average Soviet socialist realist novel about the “Great Patriotic War,” seasoned with some extra
ingredients from the spy genre to fully accommodate the taste of the Cold
War readership.
As the examples show, in Soviet literature, nuclearization is frequently
presented as a phenomenon exclusively pertaining to the American enemy. If
the Soviet nuclear program is alluded to at all, the implicit threat to the ideological foe is clad in a decidedly unmartial posture. In the poem Your strength
(Tvoia sila) published in 1949, the year that the first Soviet nuclear bomb was
produced, Evgenii Dolmatovskii strikes the tone of an idyllic lullaby: when
a baby girl is awakened by a nightly shock wave from the distant Taiga,
her father soothingly hints at an unspeakable explosive of unprecedented
power, tested by Soviet geologists for the sole purpose of granting the child
sleep unharmed by an enemy that lurks behind the borders of the socialist
empire. 31 In Il’ia Selvinskii’s above-mentioned play Reading Faust, the Soviet
Union uses the peaceful atom to fulfill its vision of a just and prosperous
society, while the Nazis are preparing for a nuclear war to be carried out by
their American successors. 32