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• 1 2020-08-26T12:53:58-04:00 Lydia Chukovskaya Bio 96 plain 2020-12-13T21:01:53-05:00 Vir Shetty & Rachel Sinex

  Lydia Korneievna Chukovskaya was born in 1907 in Helsingfors, Russian Finland. She later moved to St. Petersburg where she lived with her father. Chukovskaya was a significant writer and poet who is best known for her novella Sofia Petronova.

  Chukovskaya was born into a literary family, as her father Kornei Chukovsky was a successful and well-regarded children’s novelist. Her experiences within her family and the cultured St. Petersburg environment led her to develop a passion for literature early on; however, her career was interrupted when she was sent to Saratov for exile soon after the 1917 revolution when a friend used her father’s typewriter to write an anti-Bolshevik pamphlet. Chukovskaya was eventually permitted to return to St. Petersburg, now named Leningrad, where she obtained a job at a children’s publishing house as an editor and simultaneously began to write stories. 

  As Chukovskaya began her career, so too began the Great Terror of 1936-38. During this time, Chukovskaya married Mitya Bronstein; however, her husband was arrested in 1937 and taken away from her during the Great Terror. Chukovskaya briefly fled to Kiev, but soon returned home with her daughter to her old apartment where she found a government surveillant posted in her husband’s old bedroom. Chukovskaya kept a diary during this period, but left out many things in it, such as her friendship with poet Anna Akhmatova that could have led to arrest if discovered. Although fear plagued her, Chukovskaya felt that to not write would be a crime; therefore, in 1938 she obtained work in a writer’s colony where she finished Sofia Petrovna. 

  This famous novella was Chukovskaya’s fictional account of the Great Terror, and follows the story of Sofia Petrovna, a Soviet Everywoman. Chukovskaya drew inspiration from her own experiences when writing this book. Just like Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna works in the publishing industry and witnessed the Soviets denouncing and arresting her boss, co-workers, and friends. Both Chukovskaya and Sofia Petrovna witnessed the arrest and subsequent disappearance of close family members. Throughout the novel, Sofia Petrovna’s character undergoes tremendous hardship, which is in turn reflected in her character development. While she initially has confidence that the Soviet state would not arrest someone innocent, like her son, as she discovers her son’s ultimate sentence, she begins to lose faith and exhibits physical and psychological turmoil. Sofia’s character development clearly demonstrates the pain and suffering that the women left behind — wives, mothers, and daughters of those arrested — experienced, and certainly draws from her own life experiences during the Great Terror. Perhaps the most poignant scene of Sofia Petrovna, the title character burning her son’s letter to avoid prosecution by the Soviets was taken from Chukovskaya’s life: Akhmatova used to show Chukovskaya verses of what would become her own account of the Stalinist Terror, Requiem, then Chukovskaya would memorize them, and Akhmatova would then set the paper containing the verses on fire.

  Chukovskaya was a courageous dissident whose own experiences with Soviet suppression motivated her stories, like Sofia Petrovna, and her poems, which touched upon her life and the state of the Soviet Union. In her later years, she spoke out against the persecution of dissidents like Joseph Brodsky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Andrei Sakharov. Sofia Petrovna was finally published in the Soviet Union in February 1988, in the era of Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness). Chukovskaya became popular in the West for her dissent, but was closely watched by the KGB in her home country. Later on in life, Chukovskaya was finally afforded the recognition that she deserved, and now she is known as an important figure in Russian Literature. After a life-long writing career, Chukovskaya died in February 1996 in Peredelkino, Russia at the age of 89. 

  
  
  
  Bibliography 
  
  “Lydia Chukovskaya”, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/LydiaLydia_Chukovskaya 
       Accessed 19 September 2020.
  
  “Lydia Chukovskaya, editor, writer, heroic friend” Hidden Women of History, 
       https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-lydialydia-chukovskaya-editor-writer-heroic-friend-108509
       Accessed 19 September 2020.
  
  Vronskaya, Jeanne. "OBITUARY: Lydia Chukovskaya." The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 23 Oct. 2011, 
       www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaty-lydia-chukovskaya-1341659.html 
       Accessed 5 October 2020.

• 1 2020-12-17T21:30:11-05:00 Connected by a Thread: Personal Style as a Tool of Resistance in Sofia Petrovna 42 plain 2020-12-21T19:50:29-05:00 Sara Laine

  There are few emotions that can rival the feeling of wearing one’s favorite ensemble. Fashion is widely considered to be a way for an individual to express themselves, but in a society like that of the 1930s Soviet Union, conformity could be the difference between life and imprisonment or death. The Soviet Union under Stalin was to be divergent from the West in every way, and fashion was no exception. The Stalinist regime sought to control every facet of citizens’ lives, and attempted to standardize the Soviet mode of dress through a state-operated fashion house with uniquely Soviet silhouettes and patterns. In Lydia Chukoskaya’s novella Sofia Petrovna, descriptions of personal appearance and style exist for multiple purposes, first as a window into the mindset of characters, and later as the novella develops, as a subversion of the uniformity and ideals encouraged by Socialist Realism. 
  
  To begin with, Sofia Petrovna is chock full of detailed language. From the mention of titular character Sofia Petrovna’s meticulous hair routine on page 4, to Sofia reminiscing about her son’s attention-grabbing appearance as an infant in “all white, a white cape and a white hood” (10), Chukovskaya allows readers a glimpse into the mental state of the characters in the novella through descriptions of their clothing. A notable function of style within the novella is the emphasis on appearance as descriptors of characters’ station in life and mental state. For example, characters like Sofia's young adult son Nikolai (Kolya) and his best friend Alik are juxtaposed, with Sofia’s descriptions of her son as a beautiful child and well-dressed young man, while his friend Alik is described as having perpetually “shabby” clothes and shoes and this reflects in how she treats both boys (10, 19). Where Sofia herself is neat and up to date with her clothing choices at the beginning of the story while employed as a typist, she descends into wearing unkempt clothing that is out of season and unclean following the arrest of her son Kolya and the loss of her honorable job (96). A remarkable moment in the text is when Sofia comes across Maria Erastovna Kiparisova, the wife of a now jailed acquaintance, and her response as she is taken aback by her unfashionable appearance: 

  “On the street she noticed a tall old woman with a scarf over her hat, wearing felt boots with galoshes over them, and carrying a cane... She’s simply let herself go terribly: the felt boots, the cane, the scarf... It’s very important for a woman not to let herself go, to take care of herself. Who on earth wears felt boots these days? It’s not 1918.” (37)

  This is an especially ironic scene, as Sofia judges her old friend, yet is progressively described wearing similar clothing and even carrying a cane (107). Though she judges Kiparisova for her disheveled appearance, at the end of the novella it was as if the two are glancing at a mirror when talking to each other, both women worn down and reduced to a raggedy version of their former selves as a result of the loss of loved ones at the hands of the state. As Sofia Petrovna’s life is destroyed by the Soviet state following her only son’s arrest, there is also a corresponding deterioration of her personal style and appearance.
  
  Though never explicitly mentioned in Chukovskaya's book, Socialist Realism as a movement sought to romanticize and promote Communist ideas like collectivism and upholding the state as a leader in all aspects of life. While Socialist Realism is normally applied to art like literature and paining, Tatiana Strizhenova writes in her article “The Soviet Garment Industry in the 1930s,” that “[t]extile design was faced with the same tasks that confronted painting, their common goal being to reflect surrounding reality, to fight for a new way of life and agitate for it” (164). As part of the goal to reject the West, Stalin’s government created a fashion house to fulfill the needs of the people and provide a uniquely Soviet form of expression that did not stray too far from uniformity and collectivism. Styles encouraged by the state were inspired and designed by Western fashion designers, but the integral part of this whole system was the (anticipated) reliance of citizens on their government to dictate what their style would look like. The idea of differentiation amongst characters by dress is again present as Sofia Petrovna stands in line with other women seeking to know the whereabouts of and advocating for their loved ones who have been sent to prison or gulags. Sofia is “surprised that they were all very warmly dressed, muffled in scarves over their coats, and almost all in felt boots and galoshes” (48). Readers will recall that earlier in the text Sofia had judged Kiparisova for this similar sort of attire, so the deterioration of Sofia Petrovna’s style to dirty, haphazard dress like the other women waiting in line instead of her sharp clothing re-emphasizes her loss of personality and succumbing to uniformity encouraged by the state.
  
  Going against the grain and embracing individualistic fashion exists within Sofia Petrovna in opposition to the Soviet state. Sofia Petrovna remarks positively about Western fashion numerous times prior to her son’s arrest, and even dreams about opening up her own dress shop where global fashions would be displayed and discussed (4). While Sofia never realizes this dream, Chukovskaya introduces her younger colleague Natasha’s embroidery throughout the novella, and this functions as a subtle subversion of the state-enforced Soviet fashion norms of the time (30). Readers are told that she wears clothes that she makes herself, with intricate embroidery that harkens back to a pre-Soviet past. Natasha’s character is set apart from others almost immediately, where others buy their clothes, she is always credited with making her own. She is a reminder of the power of imagination, and that regardless of what your circumstance, your thoughts are your own. Characters like the party secretary show their rise in status or their allegiance to the Stalinist government through changes in their wardrobe, rejecting traditional Russian clothing for more uniform suits and other silhouettes endorsed by the state (55). Natasha is a rogue character: Although she does not speak much in the novella, her actions and her dress speak for her. She does not conform to others’ expectations and rules, as evidenced by her insistence to wear her handmade embroidered clothes, inability to officially join the Communist party due to her refusal to denounce her land-owning family, and choice of death over life under such a regime without her lover, Kolya. 
  
  Ultimately, Lydia Chukovskaya’s novella Sofia Petrovna sets out to both utilize descriptions of appearance and style to give insight into characters and comment on the ideals like conformity that were upheld by Socialist Realism. Chukovskaya wrote during a time where the Soviet government worked to stamp out differentiation at all levels, including clothing, through the establishment of Soviet fashion silhouettes and a state-owned fashion house. This translated into her work through characters like Sofia Petrovna whose appearance was correlated with her state of mental well-being, and Natasha whose style choices were a quiet rebellion against the uniformity enforced by the state. 
  
  Bibliography
  Chukovskaya, Lydia. Sofia Petrovna. Trans. Aline Werth. Northwestern University Press, 1994. 
  
  Strizhenova, Tatiana. “The Soviet Garment Industry in the 1930s.” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, vol. 5, 1987, pp. 160–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1503942. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020.