116 Bettina Kaibach
details of death by radiation, the long-term effects of exposure to radioactive fallout, and the mutilations and mutations. He leaves no doubt that for
the individual victims of decades to come, the damage will be irreversible.
For those individuals, even the conquering spirit of the socialist motherland
cannot provide any healing. In the poem Little Girl Sakaia is Dying (Umiraet
devochka Sakaia), Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, whose photograph
is placed like an icon above the bed of a child patient in the atomic hospital of Hiroshima, looks helplessly on as the little girl succumbs to radiation
sickness, while in some distant laboratory, an evil Doctor Oppenheimer performs his heinous experiments. 38 In A Human Being is Born (Chelovek rodilsia),
the birth of a child turns from a joyful event into a nightmare, as for many
generations Hiroshima parents will produce a “chain of unknown mutations” (“tsepʹ nikomu ne izvestnykh mutatsii”). 39
Matusovskii clearly presents Hiroshima as a tragedy, for which even socialism cannot provide an immediate cure, but here, too, it is, to borrow the title
of Vsevolod Vishnevskii’s play, an “optimistic tragedy,” which absorbs the
fate of the individual victims and the horror of atomic warfare in an overall
tenor of hope. A flower, planted by historical Doctor Shigeto in the ruins
of Hiroshima or a concert by Soviet violin virtuoso Leonid Kogan in the
Hiroshima atomic hospital suffice to restore in the doomed inhabitants of the
devastated city faith in a better world, even though they themselves will not
participate in the bright future adumbrated by such virtuous deeds. 40 Even
radiation turns from a real danger into a metaphor of humanity’s unabating
indignation at the bombing of Hiroshima, an indignation that will save the
world from future such atrocities. 41
Curiously, it seems to be predominantly girls, clearly modeled after
Sadako Sasaki, and young women that in Soviet literature (and film) figure
as Hiroshima radiation victims. 42 While Roman Kim has his “Girl from
Hiroshima” overcome radiation sickness through ideological valor, Mikhail
Matusovskii in one of his poems melodramatically contrasts the oriental
beauty and perfect self-possession of a “Miss Hiroshima” with the fact that
she is secretly suffering from leukemia. These heroines can be seen as striking
Soviet counter-images to the so-called Hiroshima Maidens, who in the early
1950s shaped the perception of the radiation victims in the United States.
Both the Soviet iconization of the “girl from Hiroshima” and the American
media reports on the young Japanese women who received treatment in the
United States reverse the shock of Hiroshima into a triumph of humanity
by reassuring their audiences that the moral and physical wounds struck by
the first nuclear bombing can be healed. Both cater to the myth of Soviet
and American, nuclear victimhood, respectively, while both states are in fact
amassing an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Needless to say, neither the Soviet
nor the American version of the “Hiroshima Maiden” could be more remote
from the experience of the actual victims. 43
The above examples have shown that in Soviet literature, the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is seamlessly integrated into the continuous
details of death by radiation, the long-term effects of exposure to radioactive fallout, and the mutilations and mutations. He leaves no doubt that for
the individual victims of decades to come, the damage will be irreversible.
For those individuals, even the conquering spirit of the socialist motherland
cannot provide any healing. In the poem Little Girl Sakaia is Dying (Umiraet
devochka Sakaia), Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, whose photograph
is placed like an icon above the bed of a child patient in the atomic hospital of Hiroshima, looks helplessly on as the little girl succumbs to radiation
sickness, while in some distant laboratory, an evil Doctor Oppenheimer performs his heinous experiments. 38 In A Human Being is Born (Chelovek rodilsia),
the birth of a child turns from a joyful event into a nightmare, as for many
generations Hiroshima parents will produce a “chain of unknown mutations” (“tsepʹ nikomu ne izvestnykh mutatsii”). 39
Matusovskii clearly presents Hiroshima as a tragedy, for which even socialism cannot provide an immediate cure, but here, too, it is, to borrow the title
of Vsevolod Vishnevskii’s play, an “optimistic tragedy,” which absorbs the
fate of the individual victims and the horror of atomic warfare in an overall
tenor of hope. A flower, planted by historical Doctor Shigeto in the ruins
of Hiroshima or a concert by Soviet violin virtuoso Leonid Kogan in the
Hiroshima atomic hospital suffice to restore in the doomed inhabitants of the
devastated city faith in a better world, even though they themselves will not
participate in the bright future adumbrated by such virtuous deeds. 40 Even
radiation turns from a real danger into a metaphor of humanity’s unabating
indignation at the bombing of Hiroshima, an indignation that will save the
world from future such atrocities. 41
Curiously, it seems to be predominantly girls, clearly modeled after
Sadako Sasaki, and young women that in Soviet literature (and film) figure
as Hiroshima radiation victims. 42 While Roman Kim has his “Girl from
Hiroshima” overcome radiation sickness through ideological valor, Mikhail
Matusovskii in one of his poems melodramatically contrasts the oriental
beauty and perfect self-possession of a “Miss Hiroshima” with the fact that
she is secretly suffering from leukemia. These heroines can be seen as striking
Soviet counter-images to the so-called Hiroshima Maidens, who in the early
1950s shaped the perception of the radiation victims in the United States.
Both the Soviet iconization of the “girl from Hiroshima” and the American
media reports on the young Japanese women who received treatment in the
United States reverse the shock of Hiroshima into a triumph of humanity
by reassuring their audiences that the moral and physical wounds struck by
the first nuclear bombing can be healed. Both cater to the myth of Soviet
and American, nuclear victimhood, respectively, while both states are in fact
amassing an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Needless to say, neither the Soviet
nor the American version of the “Hiroshima Maiden” could be more remote
from the experience of the actual victims. 43
The above examples have shown that in Soviet literature, the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is seamlessly integrated into the continuous