The Satanic Cosmic Force 117
narrative of the socialist fight against a fascist-capitalist enemy that under a
different guise essentially remains the same, while his arsenal of destruction
becomes ever more deadly. 44 The horrid facts of nuclear devastation are channeled into an all-embracing optimism about the salvational force of Soviet
ideology. Roman Kim’s The Girl from Hiroshima is particularly interesting in
that it implicitly negotiates how Hiroshima should not be presented: as an
emblem of a technological civilization that shattered the ethical foundations
of human society. In Kim’s novel, a young Japanese law student, who knows
to have received a lethal radiation dose, gets to voice the opinion that with
the bombing of Hiroshima “[…] our machine-based civilization has reached
the last stage of barbarism” (“Mashinnaia tsivilizatsiia nyne vstupila v posledniuiu stadiiu varvarstva”). On the morning of August 6, 1945, “something far
worse happened than the death of hundreds of thousands of people. That
morning human morality was burnt to ashes… and humanity has lost the
right to existence” (“V to utro proizoshlo to, chto neizmerimo strashnee gibeli soten
tysiach chelovek. V to utro ispepelilasʹ moralʹ chelovechestva… i ono utratilo pravo na
sushchestvovanie”). 45
For the student, Hiroshima is the initial spark to a chain reaction that
upturns the very basis of humanity’s moral and factual existence and will
ultimately lead to a global nuclear apocalypse. 46 Not surprisingly, these ideas
are shown to be the foul fruits of Western capitalist thinking: the young man
is inspired by an unnamed “voguish French philosopher” (“modnyi frantsuzskii pisatel”). 47 Kim’s heroine, herself lethally ill, is quick to repudiate such
defeatist nihilism and instead vows to defeat those responsible for initiating the nuclear age: “They won’t throw any more bombs” (“Bolʹshe ne budut
brosatʹ”). 48
The idea of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima as a caesura that fundamentally challenges not only humankind’s existence but also traditional
notions of good and evil, guilt and responsibility lies at the core of Vasilii
Grossman’s story Abel (August 6th). In The Sistine Madonna and Life and Fate,
he integrates these thoughts into a general critique of a society in which
bureaucratization and technology cooperate to produce mass murder. In
doing so, Grossman does not succumb to the defeatism, so anathemized by
official Soviet culture, 49 but does something far more outrageous: as a remedy for the menace of the nuclear age, he raises the imperative to forsake any
ideology at all as the driving force for the annihilatory tendencies inherent
in modern civilization.
Repentant Pilots: Grossman’s Abel (August 6th)
and Günther Anders’ Theses on the Nuclear Age
In Abel (August 6th), Grossman explores the mindset of the (fictitious) crew
of the Enola Gay on the eve of, during, and immediately after the dropping
of the atomic bomb. Here, the Cold War agenda, so prominent in official
literature on Hiroshima, is remarkably absent. The hazards inherent in the
narrative of the socialist fight against a fascist-capitalist enemy that under a
different guise essentially remains the same, while his arsenal of destruction
becomes ever more deadly. 44 The horrid facts of nuclear devastation are channeled into an all-embracing optimism about the salvational force of Soviet
ideology. Roman Kim’s The Girl from Hiroshima is particularly interesting in
that it implicitly negotiates how Hiroshima should not be presented: as an
emblem of a technological civilization that shattered the ethical foundations
of human society. In Kim’s novel, a young Japanese law student, who knows
to have received a lethal radiation dose, gets to voice the opinion that with
the bombing of Hiroshima “[…] our machine-based civilization has reached
the last stage of barbarism” (“Mashinnaia tsivilizatsiia nyne vstupila v posledniuiu stadiiu varvarstva”). On the morning of August 6, 1945, “something far
worse happened than the death of hundreds of thousands of people. That
morning human morality was burnt to ashes… and humanity has lost the
right to existence” (“V to utro proizoshlo to, chto neizmerimo strashnee gibeli soten
tysiach chelovek. V to utro ispepelilasʹ moralʹ chelovechestva… i ono utratilo pravo na
sushchestvovanie”). 45
For the student, Hiroshima is the initial spark to a chain reaction that
upturns the very basis of humanity’s moral and factual existence and will
ultimately lead to a global nuclear apocalypse. 46 Not surprisingly, these ideas
are shown to be the foul fruits of Western capitalist thinking: the young man
is inspired by an unnamed “voguish French philosopher” (“modnyi frantsuzskii pisatel”). 47 Kim’s heroine, herself lethally ill, is quick to repudiate such
defeatist nihilism and instead vows to defeat those responsible for initiating the nuclear age: “They won’t throw any more bombs” (“Bolʹshe ne budut
brosatʹ”). 48
The idea of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima as a caesura that fundamentally challenges not only humankind’s existence but also traditional
notions of good and evil, guilt and responsibility lies at the core of Vasilii
Grossman’s story Abel (August 6th). In The Sistine Madonna and Life and Fate,
he integrates these thoughts into a general critique of a society in which
bureaucratization and technology cooperate to produce mass murder. In
doing so, Grossman does not succumb to the defeatism, so anathemized by
official Soviet culture, 49 but does something far more outrageous: as a remedy for the menace of the nuclear age, he raises the imperative to forsake any
ideology at all as the driving force for the annihilatory tendencies inherent
in modern civilization.
Repentant Pilots: Grossman’s Abel (August 6th)
and Günther Anders’ Theses on the Nuclear Age
In Abel (August 6th), Grossman explores the mindset of the (fictitious) crew
of the Enola Gay on the eve of, during, and immediately after the dropping
of the atomic bomb. Here, the Cold War agenda, so prominent in official
literature on Hiroshima, is remarkably absent. The hazards inherent in the