The Satanic Cosmic Force 115
On the tenth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Literaturnaia gazeta
published an article on the visit of a delegation of nuclear survivors from
Japan to a festival in Warsaw. The report clearly mirrors a shift from the belief
in the inevitability of war to the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. The bombing of Warsaw in World War II and that of Hiroshima are still located on a
continuum of horror, the fascist-capitalist perpetrators of which are essentially the same, but the idea of Hiroshima as a prelude to a universal apocalyptic battle is now abandoned. Instead of striking a confrontational tone, the
author invokes Hiroshima and Warsaw to appeal for peace. 33 Remarkably,
the text also makes extensive mention of the effects of radiation on the survivors of Hiroshima, a question that had long been delicately skirted.
Not coincidentally, in the mid-1950s, the issue of radiation sickness began
to surface in Soviet literature on Hiroshima. Clearly, writers who addressed
the sensitive topic were expected to reconcile the horrors of long-term consequences of exposure to radioactive fallout with the forced optimism of
socialist realism. The above-quoted 1954 novel The Girl from Hiroshima by
Anatolii Kim is a showcase example of this. Kim makes it clear that with
the correct (socialist) attitude, any damage, moral as well as physical, can be
undone. In The Girl from Hiroshima, even the problem of radiation is solved
along ideological lines (and thereby the Soviet nuclear program is implicitly
and conveniently vindicated). “One shouldn’t pin everything on radiation”
(“nelʹzia vse valitʹ na radiatsiiu”), 34 a Japanese doctor assures the heroine, who
herself has received a lethal dose of radiation, and insinuates that the longterm casualties of Hiroshima are not so much bomb-related as caused by the
American capitalist practice to grant medical treatment only to the rich. In
fact, it is even hinted that there exists a Russian method for treating radiation
damage. 35 While Western capitalism is thus denounced as a cynical culture
of death, Soviet Russia appears as a beacon of life-saving hope. (It should
be pointed out, however, that such grotesque nonchalance toward fallout
dangers was by no means confined to the Soviet side, rather it was in fact
professed far more blatantly by American bomb advocate Edward Teller.). 36
In The Girl from Hiroshima, the optimism in the power of socialist ideology
to take the lethal edge of radiation is vindicated by the outcome of the story.
Eventually, Kim’s heroine rises like a phoenix from nuclear ashes. 37 Not only
does she join the Japanese Reds and, buttressed by the late Stalin’s spiritual
support, helps topple the evil forces of American capitalism and imperialism,
but she does so as a reborn, socialist person, who manages to cast off her old
oppressed self as a woman, a member of a “colored” race, a peasant held down
by a feudal system, and prepares to forge a new society forever immune to
capitalist ills and, so it seems, to radioactive radiation.
Soviet writers of the 1960s tended to have a somewhat more realistic take
on the problem of radiation, yet they, too, adhered to the optimism imperative, albeit in a subtler form. In 1965, Mikhail Matusovskii, author of the
worldwide hit Moscow Nights (Podmoskovnye vechera), devoted a whole cycle of
poetry to Hiroshima. Matusovskii does not spare his readers the gruesome
On the tenth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Literaturnaia gazeta
published an article on the visit of a delegation of nuclear survivors from
Japan to a festival in Warsaw. The report clearly mirrors a shift from the belief
in the inevitability of war to the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. The bombing of Warsaw in World War II and that of Hiroshima are still located on a
continuum of horror, the fascist-capitalist perpetrators of which are essentially the same, but the idea of Hiroshima as a prelude to a universal apocalyptic battle is now abandoned. Instead of striking a confrontational tone, the
author invokes Hiroshima and Warsaw to appeal for peace. 33 Remarkably,
the text also makes extensive mention of the effects of radiation on the survivors of Hiroshima, a question that had long been delicately skirted.
Not coincidentally, in the mid-1950s, the issue of radiation sickness began
to surface in Soviet literature on Hiroshima. Clearly, writers who addressed
the sensitive topic were expected to reconcile the horrors of long-term consequences of exposure to radioactive fallout with the forced optimism of
socialist realism. The above-quoted 1954 novel The Girl from Hiroshima by
Anatolii Kim is a showcase example of this. Kim makes it clear that with
the correct (socialist) attitude, any damage, moral as well as physical, can be
undone. In The Girl from Hiroshima, even the problem of radiation is solved
along ideological lines (and thereby the Soviet nuclear program is implicitly
and conveniently vindicated). “One shouldn’t pin everything on radiation”
(“nelʹzia vse valitʹ na radiatsiiu”), 34 a Japanese doctor assures the heroine, who
herself has received a lethal dose of radiation, and insinuates that the longterm casualties of Hiroshima are not so much bomb-related as caused by the
American capitalist practice to grant medical treatment only to the rich. In
fact, it is even hinted that there exists a Russian method for treating radiation
damage. 35 While Western capitalism is thus denounced as a cynical culture
of death, Soviet Russia appears as a beacon of life-saving hope. (It should
be pointed out, however, that such grotesque nonchalance toward fallout
dangers was by no means confined to the Soviet side, rather it was in fact
professed far more blatantly by American bomb advocate Edward Teller.). 36
In The Girl from Hiroshima, the optimism in the power of socialist ideology
to take the lethal edge of radiation is vindicated by the outcome of the story.
Eventually, Kim’s heroine rises like a phoenix from nuclear ashes. 37 Not only
does she join the Japanese Reds and, buttressed by the late Stalin’s spiritual
support, helps topple the evil forces of American capitalism and imperialism,
but she does so as a reborn, socialist person, who manages to cast off her old
oppressed self as a woman, a member of a “colored” race, a peasant held down
by a feudal system, and prepares to forge a new society forever immune to
capitalist ills and, so it seems, to radioactive radiation.
Soviet writers of the 1960s tended to have a somewhat more realistic take
on the problem of radiation, yet they, too, adhered to the optimism imperative, albeit in a subtler form. In 1965, Mikhail Matusovskii, author of the
worldwide hit Moscow Nights (Podmoskovnye vechera), devoted a whole cycle of
poetry to Hiroshima. Matusovskii does not spare his readers the gruesome