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• 1 2020-11-30T12:33:28-05:00 The Burden of Truth and its Carriers as Understood through Chingiz Aitmatov's "The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years" 24 plain 2020-12-11T16:30:22-05:00 Veronica Yabloko
  
  What does it mean to be truthful? In an age full of varied opinions, perspectives, and experiences, it becomes more difficult to define what is truthful and what is not. When is it acceptable to withhold or subvert the truth and who bears the burden of making that decision? What are the short-term and long-term consequences of subverting the truth and who will feel those repercussions? Chingiz Aitmatov explores all these questions in his landmark novel The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years (1980), which illustrates and challenges the power of oppressive regimes to manipulate the truth at the cost of its people. Unfortunately, Aitmatov’s illustrations of these dangers feel all too familiar; under the leadership of the Trump administration, facts became as subjective as opinion and truth became subverted in a manner unprecedented in twenty first-century America. Yet, Aitmatov’s story takes place in an entirely different world—a world filled with desert steppes, camels, and rocket ships. How similar can it really be to the world we live in today?
  
  Aitmatov’s story takes place deep in the steppe of Kazakhstan where a small town of people live working at a train junction. One of those people is our protagonist, Yedigei, to whom we are introduced on the eve of his friend Kazangap’s death. While he travels to the legendary cemetery Ana-Beiit, we travel to the past, learning about Yedigei’s life-shaping experiences. One such experience is the death of his good friend Abutalip. Soon after finding out of his passing, Abutalip’s wife, Zaripa, must decide whether she “will...tell [her sons] about their father’s death now or… wait a while” (222). In other words, Zaripa must decide whether to tell her children the truth or withhold it from them. Zaripa ultimately decides she must “keep from the boys the news that their father is dead” for she cannot “destroy their dreams” (223). 
  
  In this first example of altering truth, many of the aforementioned questions have a clear answer. Is it acceptable for Zaripa to lie to her children? Through her own words we discover that her children could not handle the heartbreak; thus, it is acceptable. Who bears the burden of deciding whether or not it is acceptable? Zaripa is the mother of her children; thus, it is acceptable for her to decide to withhold the truth. What are the consequences of withholding the truth and who will feel those repercussions? This question is, perhaps, a bit more complicated to answer. On the one hand, we cannot know how this lie will affect the boys in the future. On the other hand, Zaripa feels many of the repercussions herself, as she must now mourn the loss of her husband in silence. In other words, overall, Zaripa bears the majority of the burden in withholding the truth and its consequences. Compounded with the fact that she is withholding the truth from her children, who she, alone, is now responsible for, this alteration of truth feels less like manipulation and more like a kindness. From this first example, we can easily think to ourselves, withholding the truth can be a good thing.
  
  However, Aitmatov provides us with more than one example of withholding or manipulating the truth. As Yedigei continues to travel towards the cemetery, we travel thousands of miles away to the Pacific Ocean where a joint Soviet-American aircraft carrier, Convention, deals with news of extraterrestrial life. Two astronauts from aboard the satellite Parity transmit to Earth that they have made contact with another species living on the planet Lesnaya Grud (Verdant Breast). The astronauts tell of a “beautiful humanoid type” (99) of species living on a planet of “unprecedented beauty” (101). The astronauts illustrate a society that has transcended many of our earthly problems; they have no population issues, despite housing “ten thousand million people,” they can obtain energy at a “high level of efficiency” from the sun and from the “difference between day and night temperatures,” and they have “learned to control their climate” (101). Most inspiring of all, their society knows “nothing of weapons” or “war” (103). Yet, the Soviet-American Convention decides to cease all communication with these astronauts, banning them from returning to Earth and setting up an elaborate protection program to keep these extraterrestrial beings from ever coming to Earth. The entirety of the Convention disbands, vowing to never breathe a word of this extraterrestrial encounter with anyone else. Thus, the world never learns of Lesnaya Grud or its inhabitants.
  
  In this second example of withholding truth, it becomes more difficult to determine whether or not lying is acceptable. Perhaps a knee-jerk reaction would be to protest, of course it is unacceptable; humanity had a chance to learn from a society that had so much to offer: solutions to overpopulation, climate issues such as drought or tsunamis, and conflicts such as civil or international warfare. On the other hand, who’s to say that these extraterrestrial beings were not lying themselves, perhaps searching for a planet to colonize? All that is to say, we cannot know whether cutting these extraterrestrial beings off from communication was the right or wrong thing to do; thus, it is hard to say whether or not lying was acceptable. A more interesting question is, perhaps, why does the Convention, operated by the Soviet Union and the United States, have the authority to make such a decision? And how can we understand this authority in relation to Zaripa and her choice to withhold the truth from her sons?
  
  There is no simple answer to this question, but perhaps understanding the time Aitmatov wrote this will help us. At the time of publication, the Cold War was still very much ongoing, with the United States and the Soviet Union fighting to establish who would become the next world power. Aitmatov’s narrative of extraterrestrial beings especially makes sense when we think of the space race, an important front of the Cold War. Yet, in Aitmatov’s narrative the Soviet Union and the United States work together aboard the Convention, not at all in line with the rhetoric of the Cold War. Moreover, Aitmatov had been previously known as a prominent social realist; in other words, as an author promoting the beliefs of Soviet Russia, earning him the Lenin Prize for Literature and the State Prize in 1963 and 1968 respectively. So what drove Aitmatov to unite the United States and the Soviet Union aboard the fictional Convention?
  
  It is in this contradiction that the question of power comes into play, and specifically, axes of power in relation to truth. How is it that these two world powers came together on the issues of extraterrestrial beings while pulling in two separate directions in all other matters? And why did only these two powers have a say in such a world-shattering, life-altering decision? How is it that a few dozen people in a room made a decision on behalf of billions of people, altering their future and the future of generations yet to come? And what gave them the authority to make such a colossal decision?
  
  In many ways the situation Aitmatov depicts is outrageous: how could such a decision be made with zero consultation from anyone else? How could such a groundbreaking truth be withheld from the world? And yet, this exact situation (minus the extraterrestrials as far as we know) happens all the time, in all different areas of the world. Aitmatov’s choice to highlight the United States and the Soviet Union becomes all the more salient when we look at the leadership of these two nations today. The leaders of these countries are exceptionally talented at subverting the truth, withholding the truth, and manipulating the truth to their advantage. Both leaders maintain their positions of power by dispensing propaganda, discrediting sources of legitimate information, and instructing their constituents to listen only to their own subversions of truth. This, I believe, is exactly what Aitmatov is attempting to illustrate for his audience. That is not to say that the government must, therefore, be hiding a plethora of secrets; rather, that powerful governments have the capacity to do so without having to justify their actions, communicate with other governments, or hold themselves accountable. 
  
  The role of the government in relation to its people becomes even more interesting when we compare the choice of the Convention with the choice Zaripa makes. Zaripa’s choice to withhold the truth feels much more acceptable because she is the mother of those to whom she lies. Her position as such grants her the authority to choose on behalf of her children. The relationships powerful governments have with their people are more complex; yet, in many ways they, too, bare traces of a parent-child relationship. For example, the term “paternalism," referring to the strict control of a government over its subjects, stems from the word “paternal," meaning of or relating to father. The phrase “mother country” or “mother Russia” suggests that citizens must look up to, respect, and trust the authority of the government like a mother. But the idea that a country and its government is “mother” implies that its people are children, an incredibly problematic implication, as children’s thoughts and desires are often dismissed, chastised, or punished under the assumption that the “mother” knows better. And though Zaripa in this case may have known better, she is only responsible for deciding on behalf of her two sons, while the US and USSR aboard the Convention decide on behalf of billions of people. Thus, in making this comparison between the decision of Zaripa and the decision of the Convention, Aitmatov highlights how patronizing, self-aggrandizing, and dangerous ruling governments can be, especially when trusted to do what is "right" for their people, without ever consulting them. 
  
  Still, the question remains, who will feel the short-term and long-term consequences of decisions made by these axes of power? To which history responds, not the governments but their people. And yet, the very presence of literature like Aitmatov’s suggests that people are aware of the truth even when it is withheld from them. Even the most well-hidden truths are often unearthed, be it by skilled investigators or conspiracy theorists, dismissed as they may be. We may feel discouraged by the remarkably unbalanced display of power Aitmatov depicts, but Aitmatov’s illustration itself reminds us that the truth remains whether or not anyone knows of it; thus, we must continue learning, exploring, and seeking the truth.
  
  Bibliography
  Aitmatov, Chingiz. The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.