The Satanic Cosmic Force 131
Claude Eatherly, unable to shake off the image of the defenseless women
killed in Hiroshima, roam the nightly streets of an American city illuminated
by neon signs and populated by prostitutes, barmen, and millionaires. Unlike
Grossman, Matusovskii does not grant his pilot the capability of moral introspection and conscious repentance: his Claude Eatherly is possessed by an
obscure feeling of torment, for which there are no words in the ghastly world
he inhabits and which he can only vent by random acts of violence against
the very society that made him a tool for mass murder. Matusovskii presents
Eatherly as a “Raskol’nikov of the cosmic age” (“Raskolʹnikov / Kosmicheskogo
sveta”), whose crimes are but symptomatic of the general depravity of his
capitalist environment. 101 The predicament of Grossman’s repentant pilot, on
the other hand, cannot be attributed to any specific political system or ideology. This is the predicament of humanity in the grips of a technology that
has become a force unto itself. Grossman tells the story of his American protagonist in a way that leaves no doubt: if it were a Soviet pilot who, with the
best of intentions and for purely defensive reasons, had pressed the button that
releases a nuclear bomb, he would be doomed to roam the streets of Moscow
in eternal insomnia over the masses of innocent victims.
Notes
1. For a slightly different analytical approach, see also Bettina Kaibach, “Abel, Abel,
Where Is Your Brother Cain? Vasilii Grossman on Auschwitz and Hiroshima,” in
Images of Rupture in Civilization between East and West: the Iconography of Auschwitz
and Hiroshima in Eastern European Arts and Media, eds. Urs Heftrich, Robert Jacobs,
Bettina Kaibach, and Karoline Thaidigsmann (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag
Winter, 2016), pp. 187–216.
2. Quoted from Alexandra Popoff, Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century (New Haven:
Yale UP, 2019), p. 275. Suslov’s statement was recorded from memory by Grossman.
3. For their concept of “nuclearism” as “total ideology” that is “inherently genocidal”
see Robert J. Lifton and Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality. Nazi Holocaust and
Nuclear Threat (New York: Basic Books, 1990), pp. 70–73.
4. According to Grossman, Suslov actually confessed to not having read the novel,
which he knew only through excerpts quoted in reviews (see Popoff, Vasily Grossman, p. 275).
5. Paul R. Josephson, “Atomic-Powered Communism: Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR,” Slavic Review, 55, 2 (Summer, 1996): 322; Paul R. Josephson, “Rockets, Reactors, and Soviet Culture,” in Science and the Soviet Social Order, ed. Lauren
A. Graham (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990), pp. 168–191.
6. See John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev. The Life and Fate of
Vasily Grossman (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pp. 272–273. The meeting did
not take place, since after the confiscation of the manuscript of Life and Fate by
the KGB, Grossman deemed it too risky. In their biography of Grossman, John
and Carol Garrard present a diagram from Grossman’s unpublished notebooks that
testifies to his interest in the technical aspects of nuclear technology and the deadly
impact of radiation (Garrard and Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev, pp. 332–333).
7. Both Abel (August 6th) and The Sistine Madonna were first published in 1989. In the
Soviet Union, Life and Fate first appeared in 1988. In 1980, it had been published in
Lausanne, based on a microfilm version that was smuggled to the West (cf. Garrard
Claude Eatherly, unable to shake off the image of the defenseless women
killed in Hiroshima, roam the nightly streets of an American city illuminated
by neon signs and populated by prostitutes, barmen, and millionaires. Unlike
Grossman, Matusovskii does not grant his pilot the capability of moral introspection and conscious repentance: his Claude Eatherly is possessed by an
obscure feeling of torment, for which there are no words in the ghastly world
he inhabits and which he can only vent by random acts of violence against
the very society that made him a tool for mass murder. Matusovskii presents
Eatherly as a “Raskol’nikov of the cosmic age” (“Raskolʹnikov / Kosmicheskogo
sveta”), whose crimes are but symptomatic of the general depravity of his
capitalist environment. 101 The predicament of Grossman’s repentant pilot, on
the other hand, cannot be attributed to any specific political system or ideology. This is the predicament of humanity in the grips of a technology that
has become a force unto itself. Grossman tells the story of his American protagonist in a way that leaves no doubt: if it were a Soviet pilot who, with the
best of intentions and for purely defensive reasons, had pressed the button that
releases a nuclear bomb, he would be doomed to roam the streets of Moscow
in eternal insomnia over the masses of innocent victims.
Notes
1. For a slightly different analytical approach, see also Bettina Kaibach, “Abel, Abel,
Where Is Your Brother Cain? Vasilii Grossman on Auschwitz and Hiroshima,” in
Images of Rupture in Civilization between East and West: the Iconography of Auschwitz
and Hiroshima in Eastern European Arts and Media, eds. Urs Heftrich, Robert Jacobs,
Bettina Kaibach, and Karoline Thaidigsmann (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag
Winter, 2016), pp. 187–216.
2. Quoted from Alexandra Popoff, Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century (New Haven:
Yale UP, 2019), p. 275. Suslov’s statement was recorded from memory by Grossman.
3. For their concept of “nuclearism” as “total ideology” that is “inherently genocidal”
see Robert J. Lifton and Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality. Nazi Holocaust and
Nuclear Threat (New York: Basic Books, 1990), pp. 70–73.
4. According to Grossman, Suslov actually confessed to not having read the novel,
which he knew only through excerpts quoted in reviews (see Popoff, Vasily Grossman, p. 275).
5. Paul R. Josephson, “Atomic-Powered Communism: Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR,” Slavic Review, 55, 2 (Summer, 1996): 322; Paul R. Josephson, “Rockets, Reactors, and Soviet Culture,” in Science and the Soviet Social Order, ed. Lauren
A. Graham (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990), pp. 168–191.
6. See John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev. The Life and Fate of
Vasily Grossman (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pp. 272–273. The meeting did
not take place, since after the confiscation of the manuscript of Life and Fate by
the KGB, Grossman deemed it too risky. In their biography of Grossman, John
and Carol Garrard present a diagram from Grossman’s unpublished notebooks that
testifies to his interest in the technical aspects of nuclear technology and the deadly
impact of radiation (Garrard and Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev, pp. 332–333).
7. Both Abel (August 6th) and The Sistine Madonna were first published in 1989. In the
Soviet Union, Life and Fate first appeared in 1988. In 1980, it had been published in
Lausanne, based on a microfilm version that was smuggled to the West (cf. Garrard