The Soviet Union As an Empire by Fiction

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The Soviet Union As an Empire by Fiction

R. Auclert

PhD student, University of Sheffield, Jessop West, UK

Since the First All-Union Congress of Soviet writers held in 1934, Socialist Realism had been officially considered the basis for Soviet literature and literary criticism. After the World War II its mission extended to the periphery of the Eastern bloc. Analyzing the aims of official propaganda through novels, one can consider the Soviet Union an “Empire by fiction”, to paraphrase Geir Lundestad's fortunate title (who calls the United States an “Empire by Invitation”). To enhance unity inside the communist camp, writers often resorted to the perception of the enemy. Fearful and phantasmagorical, he is surrounded by an inspiring universe that unleashes the imagination of people. Then Yugoslav President Josip Tito became the case in question. “The Yugoslav Tragedy” (1951) came out three years after the Stalin-Tito split. Due to the acerbic condemnation of the “traitor” in the novel, together with a number of articles published in newspapers, Orest Maltsev, a stalwart of Socialist Realism, was awarded the Stalin Prize. Following Michel Foucault's bi-functional nature of power, I argue that in Maltsev's description of the Yugoslav enemy, not only does the Soviet regime punish guilty behavior, but it also legitimizes itself by enhancing Soviet prestige at war (the indisputable winner vs. the shameful resistance fighters) and so reinforces Soviet values. This paper offers a new perspective on those founding principles in the early Cold War era and explains how fiction was used as the main tool of imperial soft power.

Keywords: Socialist Realism, Stalinism, Enemy, Cold War, Soft power, Imperial consciousness.

Ñîâåòñêèé Ñîþç êàê èìïåðèÿ, ñîçäàííàÿ ñëîâîì

Ð. Îêëåð

àñïèðàíò, Óíèâåðñèòåò Øåôôèëäà, Âåëèêîáðèòàíèÿ

Ïåðâûé Âñåñîþçíûé Ñúåçä ñîâåòñêèõ ïèñàòåëåé â 1934 ã. îïðåäåëèë ñîöðåàëèçì êàê åäèíñòâåííûé äîïóñòèìûé ìåòîä ñîâåòñêîé õóäîæåñòâåííîé ëèòåðàòóðû è ëèòåðàòóðíîé êðèòèêè. Ïîñëå Âåëèêîé Îòå÷åñòâåííîé âîéíû âëèÿíèå ñîöðåàëèçìà ðàñïðîñòðàíèëîñü äî ïåðèôåðèè êîììóíèñòè÷åñêîãî áëîêà.  ñòàòüå èññëåäóåòñÿ, êàê èìåííî îôèöèàëüíàÿ ïðîïàãàíäà èñïîëüçóåò ëèòåðàòóðó äëÿ äîñòèæåíèÿ ñâîèõ öåëåé, à òàêæå âûäâèãàåòñÿ íîâàÿ ãèïîòåçà î òîì, ÷òî Ñîâåòñêèé Ñîþç áûë èìïåðèåé, ñîçäàííîé ñëîâîì. Ïðîâîäèòñÿ ïàðàëëåëü ñ òåçèñîì Ãåéðà Ëóíäåñòàäà, íàçâàâøåãî ÑØÀ «èìïåðèåé ïî ïðèãëàøåíèþ». Ñîâåòñêèå ïèñàòåëè ÷àñòî ïðèáåãàëè ê èäåîëîãåìå âðàãà äëÿ òîãî, ÷òîáû ïîäêðåïèòü åäèíñòâî âíóòðè êîììóíèñòè÷åñêîãî ëàãåðÿ. Þãîñëàâñêèé ïðåçèäåíò Èîñèï Òèòî îêàçàëñÿ îòëè÷íûì ïðèìåðîì âðàãà. «Þãîñëàâñêàÿ Òðàãåäèÿ» Îðåñòà Ìàëüöåâà (1951) áûëà îïóáëèêîâàíà ÷åðåç òðè ãîäà ïîñëå ðàçðûâà îòíîøåíèé ìåæäó Ñòàëèíûì è Òèòî. Æåñòêîå îñóæäåíèå Òèòî êàê «ïðåäàòåëÿ» íàðÿäó ñ ñåðèåé ïîëîæèòåëüíûõ îòçûâîâ, îïóáëèêîâàííûõ â ãàçåòàõ, îáåñïå÷èëè àâòîðó ðîìàíà, îäíîìó èç ñòîëïîâ ñîöðåàëèçìà, Ñòàëèíñêóþ ïðåìèþ. Ðîìàí ïðåäëàãàåò íåîáû÷íûé ïðèìåð òîãî, êàê ëèòåðàòóðà ìîæåò áûòü ïðèìåíåíà ê ãåîïîëèòèêå. Îòðèöàÿ ðîëü þãîñëàâîâ â îñâîáîæäåíèè ñâîåé ñòðàíû, Îðåñò Ìàëüöåâ ïî ñóùåñòâó ïûòàåòñÿ óçàêîíèòü ñîâåòñêóþ ãåãåìîíèþ íàä Þãîñëàâèåé.  äàííîé ñòàòüå, èñïîëüçóÿ èäåþ Ìèøåëÿ Ôóêî î áèôóíêöèîíàëüíîé ïðèðîäå âëàñòè, ÿ äîêàçûâàþ, ÷òî ñâîèì îïèñàíèåì þãîñëàâîâ àâòîð íå òîëüêî íàêàçûâàåò «âèíîâíîãî», íî òàêæå âîçâûøàåò ïðåñòèæ Êðàñíîé àðìèè -- áåññïîðíîãî ïîáåäèòåëÿ â âîéíå. Ñòàëèíñêèå öåííîñòè ó Ìàëüöåâà íîñÿò íåîñïîðèìûé õàðàêòåð. Èçó÷åíèå âðàãà â ðîìàíå Ìàëüöåâà äàåò íàì ïðåäñòàâëåíèå îá èìïåðñêîé ïîëèòèêå ïîçäíåãî ñòàëèíèñòñêîãî Ñîâåòñêîãî Ñîþçà, óêàçûâàÿ íà êîíêðåòíûé ñïîñîá èñïîëüçîâàíèÿ ëèòåðàòóðíîé äèïëîìàòèè. Ïðèåìû ñòàëèíñêîé ïðîçû ïîêàçûâàþò, ÷òî Ñîâåòñêèé Ñîþç áûë íå ìåíåå «ìÿãêîé», ÷åì «òâåðäîé» ñèëîé. Êðîìå òîãî, â ñòàòüå îñâåùàþòñÿ ãëàâíûå èäåîëîãè÷åñêèå âåõè íà÷àëà õîëîäíîé âîéíû è ïîêàçûâàåòñÿ, êàê ëèòåðàòóðà ñëóæèëà îñíîâíûì îðóäèåì èìïåðñêîé «ìÿãêîé ñèëû». Êëþ÷åâûå ñëîâà: ñîöðåàëèçì, ñòàëèíèçì, âðàã, õîëîäíàÿ âîéíà, «ìÿãêàÿ ñèëà», èìïåðñêîå ñîçíàíèå. soviet union fiction literary

As the most significant outcome of the Bolshevik revolution, communist ideology in the Soviet Union occupied an indisputable place in its policy. For this reason, if one wants to understand the roots of the Soviet decision making, one cannot bypass the study of the communist gospels in which the aims and means of Marxism-Leninism are explained to the masses. These gospels are Socialist Realist novels. Indeed, since the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers held in 1934 Socialist Realism had become the basis for Soviet literature and literary criticism. It set up for the artist such a standard as the truthful, historically precise representation of reality in its revolutionary development. This true- to-life representation of reality was also aimed at the ideological transformation and education of the workers in the “spirit of socialism”, as they said at the time. After the Second World War its mission extended to the periphery of the Eastern bloc in order to “roll back” Western influence as well as to strengthen the socialist camp.

“The Yugoslav Tragedy” (1951), the Stalin Prize novel at the outset of the Cold War, offers an extraordinary example of how literature can be applied to geopolitics. Denying the role of the Yugoslavs in the liberation of their own country, the book's main goal is to legitimize Soviet hegemony over Yugoslavia as well as to comminate its integration into the West. This paper aims to show the Soviet regime's literary diplomacy at the time when “the `operational weapon' was culture”. Analyzing the use of novels by official propaganda, one can consider the Soviet Union an “Empire by fiction”, to paraphrase Geir Lundes- tad's fortunate title.

Unlike Lundestad's expression “Empire by invitation,” limpid, seductive and paradoxical at once, my title “Empire by fiction” admits some ambiguity: on the one hand, “Empire by fiction” points to fiction, i.e. to literature, as to the vehicle transmitting Socialist values. As Hannibal used elephants to lead his conquests, the Soviet system resorted to the narrative as an “Empire-builder”, as cement to maintain symbolically what was gained by economic or military means. On the other hand, one can consider this concept not from the perspective of the ruler (Hannibal, Cesar or Stalin), but “from below”, i.e. through the lens of the new empire's subjects. If Lundestad says that the American empire is built upon democratic choice and consent, my expression suggests that to hold sway over the satellites, especially after the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Red Army at the end of the war, was, to a certain degree, possible owing to the communist narrative, i.e. to the political fiction that ended in 1991. This paper attempts to explore both meanings of such “empire by fiction” and to track down the fragments of the Soviet “imperial consciousness” up to the present day.

The Enemy Escapes from the Book

In this section I will show that fiction has a direct impact on the political consciousness of the reader and how, in the mind of the latter, imaginary enemies in the book become real.

Soon after the end of World War II the former allies encountered crises where “traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity” met Western fears of the Red invasion of Europe articulated by Winston Churchill in his famous Fulton speech. In the atomic age, when any direct conflict could have led to mutual destruction, ideology became the main battlefield for the two superpowers. These techniques included psychological warfare and cultural infiltration. In the Eastern bloc, the Zhdanov doctrine was implemented in 1946, and Stalin created the Cominform in October 1947. It was a new structure of psychological warfare against both Truman's idea of containment and the Marshall Plan. Indeed, “both Soviet and American policymakers realized that to “win the minds of men” in Europe, they needed to appeal more to their cultural than to their political identity”. More precisely, “culture in the study of international relations may be defined as the sharing and transmitting of consciousness within and across national boundaries”. I see two reasons for privileging this approach: firstly, all the post-war political identities were diluted in the common struggle against fascism; secondly, culture appeals to one's sincere beliefs often situated outside the sphere of politics. Thus, cultural campaigns, infiltrating into the self of “cultural subjects”, covering its innermost political goals, “looking interesting”, are by far the most efficient.

In the world of literature, the convention of fiction invites myth as a guest of reality; thus, “the novel rode escort to contemporary history”, providing “Soviet and Western fictional responses to the Cold War” and shaping the consciousnesses of the readers. No later than April 1949, the Cominform organized the World Congress of Advocates of Peace in Paris, including key official Soviet writers (Aleksander Fadeev and Ilya Ehren- burg). As for the US, they just began to organize their “Deminform”, which resulted in the Congress of Cultural Freedom whose opening ceremony took place in June 1950 in Berlin. The Congress was an instrument to rally the European elites, and, first of all, writers, against the communist camp. Thus the “book war” started, but the Soviet Union was certainly a well-trained fighter.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had already had some twenty years experience in literary propaganda. During the 1930s the Red Army viewed fiction as “one of the most powerful tools for the organization and education of the masses”. The First Congress of the Soviet Writers held in 1934 coined the definition of “Socialist Realism”. As Yuri Olesha put it, the writer is “the engineer of human souls” whose task is to make people support the Party and its struggle for the victory of Communism. This doctrine was still maintained after his death. At the Second Congress in 1954, Aleksei Surkov, First Secretary of the Directorate of the Writers' Union, proclaimed that, “Literature is the sharp-edged weapon of socialist-political action. It is tightly connected to politics and is subordinate to the latter”.

More importantly, Socialist Realism was -- or, at least, ought to have been -- a mass phenomenon. “By saying “readers”, one implies “people”. In our country almost every literate person is a reader, because to the illiterate, they are rare; it is an anomaly. The “people-reader” believes us, the Soviet writers”, said one Socialist Realist classic. Such “people-reader” (or “worker-readers”) was a great asset in the cultural war. Hence, Soviet literature had the strongest social dimension. As Vera Dunham argues, “literature [stands] between the regime and the people and [constitutes] the conversation between the two”. It is an agora made of words where members of society can meet and deal with political issues. Besides, many fiction writers used to take over a political function, producing texts with totally political content. That is, for example, the case of Nikolai Shpanov (“The Diplomats with a Cloak and Dagger”, 1952 or “Writer and Vigilance”, 1953), and Orest Maltsev (“Tito's Chronicler”, 1949). Because of this social interaction, “literature [is] not only a receiver of signal but a sender of them <.. .> [and] the most dominant existential clichés of Stalinism derive from literary models”.

In this mass production, enemy is the true hero of fiction. Along with the cult of the positive hero, the figure of the enemy is also central in novels and films of late Stalinism. Often being the trigger of the plot, the enemy is also the point at which all the actions of the protagonists converge, and once he is unmasked and disappears from the scene, the story ends. Indeed, the enemy is also the main character in Cold War mythology.

Generally, there can be two approaches to the figure of enemy: subjective and objective. On the one hand, the very concept of enmity is often put into doubt by a number of the authors who studied the topic -- that is the subjective approach. On the other hand, in my research, I consider that the enemy has an objective dimension by the simple material rivalry of interests. This is true for the contest between two empires when the very existence of one empire questions the universal value of the other. By and large, in geopolitics and, in particular, in the case of the Cold War, it seems difficult to define the enemy as a sort of delusion we have to struggle with and, eventually, deny it as such. That is why I support the objective definition of the enemy, in the wake of Schmitt's theory.

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) is the main thinker of enmity. A German jurist and a political theorist, he remains controversial due to his allegiance to the Nazi regime. However, his academic works influenced many philosophers and political authors, including Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, and Slavoj 2izek. Schmitt defines the enemy as the genesis of any political and cultural struggle, “the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy”. In other words, according to Schmitt, the distinction between friend and enemy represents the extreme degree of unity or disunity, so the essence of the political. In the next sentence, he postulates that “this provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition”. Such a criterion is particularly appropriate in the Soviet case. Hence, official literature, with its wide collections of characters, friends and foes, mirrors the ideology of the party. By studying the enemy in various Socialist Realist novels, my goal is to identify the political discourse at the time.

Besides, Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov does not question Schmitt's hypothesis, pointing to the archaic instinct to share the world between “we-them”. He even extends it by saying that it creates a culture of fear and hope, and political consciousness capable of mobilizing the masses; he defines the paradox of enmity as a “necessary lethal threat”. Yet, by mobilizing itself against the enemy and the threat it stands for, the Soviet Union expresses itself as a vital organism making its ideological choices. In other words, to represent the enemy in artistic works is to construct its own identity. During the early Cold War period, the Soviet writers often resorted to the perception of the enemy in order to create the image of a common communist camp. After the Stalin-Tito split in 1948, Yugoslav President Joseph Tito turned out to be a perfect option for conveying the role of such an enemy.

Orest Maltsev's Yugoslav Tragedy: The Case of a Tarpeian Book

After the war, the Red Army took Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Empire acquired new borders and a new critical mass. The foundation of the Cominform, and the economic and ideological tightening up was welcomed by the majority of the communists in Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia, however, with Tito as a “national communist”, who led the resistance movement during the war, was a black sheep. When the latter started, the Soviet Union was still bound by the Ribbentrop -- Molotov pact. So when the Yugoslav peasants joined the Communist Party, they were more urged by the defence of their motherland than by Marxist-Leninist ideology. During the war, there were frequent conflicts between Tito, who was asking for help in the struggle not only with Germans, but also with his domestic rivals, and Stalin who did not consider the Yugoslav front the major one. After the war, Yugoslavia refused to obey Stalin since the Red army was called to other fronts. Thus, the role of the Yugoslav communists in their own national liberation deprived Moscow of the legitimacy to impose its unshared authority on them after the war. The conflict took a dramatic turn, especially after three particular incidents.

Firstly, despite the fact that Yugoslavia followed the Soviet economic model, Tito's regime was not willing to implement reforms on behalf of the Soviet Union and rejected Stalin's attempts to transform the country into a Soviet satellite as well as refused The Marshall Plan aid. Secondly, Tito began to lay claim to the leadership of the Communist countries in Eastern Europe. During the liberation of Trieste by his army, he affirmed his regional leadership by demanding that Istria, Zara and Fiume be “given back” to Yugoslavia. Stalin, fearing to hurt the Italian communists, did not back Tito. Later, Tito went as far as to propose a Balkan federation. Thirdly, Tito's active support of the Greek rebels against the British influence had irritated Stalin who wanted to avoid a conflict with his Western allies at any cost. In February 1948, Stalin called Tito in Moscow, but the latter declined the invitation, alleging illness. Consequently, Stalin enforced economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and the leaders started exchanging letters in which Stalin was blaming Tito for violation of the communist dogma, for being a Trotskyite and for his lack of democracy. As for Tito, he defended his vision of a “national communism”.

From the summer of 1948 until Stalin's death, a pitiless anti-Yugoslav campaign was launched by Soviet political authorities and media. To understand all its intensity, one has to keep in mind that, like Berlin, Yugoslavia was a frontline of the cultural war. For the Soviet leaders, moving backwards would have meant a “bandwagon” effect and could eventually have led to the collapse of the Soviet bloc as a whole. In June 1948, Stalin expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform and urged the “loyal Yugoslav” to get rid of the “Tito clique”, but these measures only strengthened the Yugoslav unity against its adversary. During the year of the economic blockade (1949-1952), Tito turned to America for help and introduced decentralization and principles of market economy (demand, supply, profit) in his country. Tito's separate road to socialism dramatically challenged the communist dogma and Stalin's project to integrate Eastern Europe in one monolithic bloc. Under the accusations of “rootless cosmopolitanism” and “national nihilism”, Titoism was declared treason. From the autumn of 1949, a large purge was launched in communist parties throughout Eastern Europe and even in Soviet society itself: certain politicians and writers were accused of subversive actions and of collaboration with Marshal Tito and the Western intelligence services. In November 1949, the Cominform enforced the resolution “The Yugoslav Communist Party in the hands of murderers and spies”. Even sport became part of the game: at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, the Soviet football team was defeated by the Yugoslavs. What follows was that the inglorious team was broken up, the coach and some players had to return their previous awards for having “undermined the prestige of Soviet sport and Soviet state”. Records of the Ministry of State Security are testimony to Stalin's plan to murder Tito (spraying bacteria of pneumonic plague!), but his death in 1953 left this plan unrealized.

The author of our case study, Orest Maltsev (1906-1972), was born in the region of Kursk. In 1920, he was a volunteer in the Red Army. After he earned a diploma in literature, Maltsev worked for the newspapers “Krasnaya Zvezda” and “Na strazhe”. As a war correspondent, he accompanied the Soviet troops moving from the North Caucasus to Belgrade, Budapest and Vienna, and took part in the liberation of Western Ukraine.

With an opportunistic mind, as early as 1948, Maltsev seized the Stalin-Tito split to begin a new novel following the Party line tenets. Three years later “The Yugoslav Tragedy” came out. The plot of the novel is simplistic in the Socialist Realistic sense of the term: “The Yugoslav Tragedy” (1951) describes the struggle of the Yugoslav resistance fighters against Hitler's army. Due to the confrontation between Stalin and Tito, Moscow urgently needed to denigrate the importance in their own liberation of the Yugoslav communists in order to establish the Soviet authority. In this context, it is no surprise that the description of the fighters is unkind and even grotesque.

The Yugoslavs -- and among them Tito in particular -- are reproached for their nationalism, which indirectly follows “the old plan of Hitler and Mussolini for the Balkans: to gather them as a colonial possession and turn into a huge military bastion to launch attacks on the European countries. The Balkan Slavs, as well as the Greeks, the Romanians and Hungarians would be employed as cannon fodder at the disposal of the “Aryan race”. Being under the Fascist boot, precisely, under these conditions of tension and humiliation, local -- and even tribal -- chauvinism was blooming as never before” (280). Thus, in spite of their positive struggle against Hitler, the Yugoslavs appear to be his strategic accomplices. Moreover, they are described as primitive: “-- Moscow! Moscow! Do you hear us? <...> We inform you, fere (druzhe) Stalin, we're defeating heavily the fascists. Thank you for your help and for the machine guns. Send us anything else, and in a mass. But more importantly, let your soldiers come quicker; we alone are in a very hard situation. Hello! Hello! <...> Hey, cretin, open your eyes, the transmitter doesn't work!” (323) and they are also materialist, hypocritical and opportunistic: “Tito is a secret friend of the members of the Labor Party, but shouts from the rooftops his loyalty to the Soviet Union” (222). Naturally, the book is full of American and British spies, who aimed to make profits from the war.

Due to his acerbic condemnation of the “traitor” in the novel, along with several articles, which appeared in newspapers, the stalwart of Socialist Realism, Orest Maltsev was awarded the Stalin Prize (second grade) in 1952. Half a million copies were sold, the book underwent more than ten re-editions, and the author signed a contract for a film adapta- tion. He became rich and enjoyed a luxurious dacha in Peredelkino.

A general reception of the book by the critics was positive. The playwright Geor- gi Mdivani (1905-1981), in his article “History of treason”, praised the veracity of the novel: “Using historically faithful and documentary means, the book explains that during World War II Tito was an agent of the Gestapo <...> his action contributed to the removal of a big part of the Nazi army from the Balkans and to its direction towards the Soviet Union <.> also the author gives an account on the true love of the Yugoslav resistance fighters for Comrade Stalin. He shows that the former were trapped in a network of treason. The tragedy of the Yugoslav people relies on the fact that at that time they kept believing in Tito's clique, whereas he had destroyed national heroes and wanted to transform Yugoslavia into a bridgehead of American imperialism”. Regardless of his ideological approval, Mdivani points to some negligence in the style, and regrets that the number of pages devoted to the enemy camp prevails over the national theme. Ironically, five years before this criticism, Mdivani had been the scriptwriter of a film by Abram Room entitled “In the Yugoslav Mountains” (1946). The plot deals with. the common struggle of the Red Army with Yugoslav peasants, and Tito's fighters against the Nazi invader. Needless to say, the film was forbidden in the Soviet Union after the Stalin-Tito split. In an interesting manner, it was also prohibited in Yugoslavia for several decades, even after Khrushchev's settlement of the conflict. The writer Yurii Libedinskii (1898-1959) shared Mdivani's endorsement, stressing that the novel “answered to the readers' demand on international events <...> and presented the Trotskyite-spy Tito crew and their machinations to seize power”. To put it briefly, the book brought to light “truth, so to speak, from the inside” (pravda, tak skazat, iznutri).

But critics were not unanimous. In their “Remarks on the Manuscript of the Yugoslav Tragedy”, two members of the “Znamia” editorial board I. Medvedev and N. Bondar' reproached Maltsev for repeating Tito's arguments when he overestimated the extent of the liberation struggle in Yugoslavia (with a ratio of power of 6 against 1 in favour of the foe). The author failed to properly mention Stalingrad heroes, whose role was presented as diversion to draw the Nazis to themselves. The critics underlined that unlike the British policy in Yugoslavia, Maltsev characterized the American one as “unclear”, whereas “it was totally clear”. They also deplored many factual mistakes in the role of the Soviet mission; in translations of Serbian words, names of some villages and dates when certain regions were liberated; in the duties, actions or travels of personalities of the time. Andrich Ratomir added many other geographical and tactical mistakes to the list of inaccuracies. At the time of his criticism, he was the editor of the newspaper “For a socialist Yugoslavia!” In 1943, he was Major-General Commandant of a regiment of resistance fighters in South Serbia, and recommended the Writers' Union to organize a meeting between himself and Maltsev to correct certain mistakes that diminished the significance and sharpness of the novel to the Yugoslav reader. In his view, it would be wiser for the author to remove the whole first part since it takes place in Eastern Serbia, although resistance fighters' movements were active in the South of the country. By the way, it is noticeable that Ratomir's paper dates from July 18, 1952, i.e. four months after the book had been awarded the Stalin Prize. Such drastic criticism of a work that had just been declared as the benchmark of the Party line testifies that relative amplitude existed in the postwar literary debates. At least there was a debate.

But in spite of the prestige of the award, the book was harshly criticized by Maltsev's peers and many of them even “stopped greeting him when they met in the street”. Logically, some people suspected that with this book, Maltsev was a Kremlin representative, and the rumor even spread that he resorted to a ghostwriter. The latter might have been the war veteran Vladimir Gurvich, the son of Nicholas I. Hourwich (Americanized ver-sion), one of the founders of the American Communist Party. On the pretext of parasitism, MVD organized for Gurvich's removal from his job and from his Moscow flat. Then he may have written “The Yugoslav Tragedy” to earn his living. In 1955, when Khrushchev restored diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, the book was withdrawn from all the libraries, the project of the film was dropped, and the courtier Maltsev fell into disfavor and poverty. He became a casualty of the versatile Party line.

After this presentation of the “Yugoslav Tragedy”, I want to put forward my main thesis and argue that Maltsev's work is a `Tarpeian book', that is to say, a case of empire building through fiction in a way that brings to mind an edifying punishment. Firstly, I repeat that I am not dealing here with high calibre literature, but with a pure political text. It can be compared to the article by the same author on Vladimir Dedier entitled “Tito's Chronicler” (1949), where the latter is accused of presenting himself as a fervent Serbian nationalist and at the same time, of despising the Serbian people. Maltsev considers him an agent of the United States and adds that when he was a student, he looked like an American gangster. Furthermore, he points out several inaccuracies in Tito's war diaries written by Dedier, challenging -- just like in the novel -- his prestige as a resistance fighter. The same cliché on the American influence in Eastern Europe and on “the Tito's clique” can be found in the novel “Plotters” (1951) by Nikolai Shpanov. Half a million copies had been sold when the book was forbidden in 1956 for the same reason as Maltsev's book. One can quote many other examples.

This political fiction fulfils the function of storytelling, as defined by Brian Boyd, “In order to assess novel or problematic situations human minds can draw not only on our individual present and species' past, as all minds can do, but also on their individual pasts, even on particular episodes, and can consider projected futures, as they turn ideas around through a possibility space enlarged by the dimensions of the hypothetical and the coun- terfactual”. Hence, the fictional narrative transforms the perception of political reality.

Following Michel Foucault's bi-functional nature of power, one can argue that in Maltsev's description of the Yugoslav enemy, not only does the Soviet regime punish guilty behavior, but it also legitimizes itself by enhancing the Soviet prestige at war (the indisputable winner vs. the shameful resistance fighters) and so reinforcing the Soviet values. One can find an example in the exchange between the Russian hero and Katnych, a resistance leader (340-341). Katnych reads one of his texts exposing his political views and boasting about the situation of Yugoslavia, “at the heart of the heart of the world” (Europe) and pretending to be the best of the Balkan nations, which realizes the combination between Western culture and communism. Then the narrator “sets the record straight” and mentions the Yugoslav debt to the Russian army in the 19th and 20th centuries to gain its independence, mocks his cultural pretentions (“this half-feudal culture here, where people still write with a wooden plough and maintain with each other relations of arbitrary rule and slavery)”. This symbolic punishment is a reminder of the “Tarpeian rock” in ancient Rome. Initially, the legend says that while Rome was besieged by the Sabine king Titus Tatius, Tarpeia, daughter of the commander of the citadel, promised Tatius that she would give him entry to the city, if she received “what the Sabine bore on their left arms” as payment, i.e. their bracelets. But instead they crushed her to death with their shields and hurled her body from the Capitoline Hill. From then on, the traitors were executed by being thrown from the cliff, and this carried a stigma of shame. This situation is similar to the Yugoslav case, justifying the qualification of Maltsev's text as a “Tarpeian book”.

It is interesting to note that the aim of such an empire by fiction is to have a specific impact on perception of the reader at the centre as well as at the periphery of the bloc. On the one hand, the strong effect on the people's republics can be measured through criticism and readers' letters. For example, the novel spurred an intense reaction in the Bulgarian press, and there was even an exchange of letters between the author himself and a group of Bulgarian frontier guards. The same effect can be observed in the RSFSR, at the centre of the empire, where the perception of a periphery arose in the Soviet readers' shaping of an imperial consciousness. This process was carefully sustained by discussion groups at the local level. Thus, in the municipal library of Kokchetavo (Kokshetau since 1993), a city in the province of Northern Kazakhstan, conferences and evening readings were regularly organized and dedicated to Stalin Prize winners, including Orest Maltsev's “Yugoslav Tragedy”.

Abroad, the propaganda machine was resorting to its wide international networks; such was the case with “Parallèle 50”, a Franco-Czech journal conveying Moscow's message about Maltsev's novel, “the novelist didn't produce a fiction but a documentary... on Tito's conspiracy to seize power. after reading this book, we hope that the Yugoslav people will be free from its today oppressors”. In doing so, the Soviet power led the literary offensive, targeting readers of the Western bloc. The Soviet empire by fiction extended beyond the ideological borders to challenge the European narrative on its own territory.

The study of Maltsev's novel gives us some insight into the imperial policy of the late Stalinist Soviet Union emphasizing the specific way to avoid any “ideological dissonance”. We call it “Tarpeian book” for it is a reminder of the punishment of the traitors in ancient Rome playing the role of the ostracised in the communist bloc. In this sense, the Soviet “Empire by fiction” demonstrates an undeniable symbolic component within its materialistic dimension. Indeed, the Party line was more decisive than any military goal per se. In the evolution of Soviet doctrinal debates, Tito's official return to favour in 1955 was the prologue to the inversion of values that took place at the XX Party Congress.

As for the consequences of American policy, the Yugoslav crisis fed the diplomat George Kennan's hope that other communist leaders “might already be infected by the Tito virus”. Hitherto, he recommended “fostering a heretical process” in Eastern Europe. Thus, perhaps because he was reassured by the first cracks in the Eastern bloc, the inflexible author of containment showed unusual appeasement and favoured negotiations with Moscow. Unfortunately, at the turn of the 1950s he lost his influence within the Department of State and was not able to stop the McCarthyist purges. The cultural war would gather steam within the next decade.

From Imperial Consciousness to Imperial Fiction

After having gone through the case-study and demonstrated the existence of “Empire by fiction”, let us focus on the concepts of empire and imperial consciousness in the Cold war context and today. Besides, what is their impact on Soviet and Russian identities? During the Cold War, the very concept of empire had moved to the ideological field too and, consequently, had to be defined anew. The domination within the two blocs implied the acceptance of an economic system (liberalism vs. state control) and of a set of values (individual liberties vs. cult of the worker). The Cold War empires relied on the principle of “Soft Power” formulated by Joseph Nye and struggled to “win the hearts and minds”, “Traditionally the test of a great power was its strength. Today, however, the definition of power is losing its emphasis on military force <...> The factors of technology, education, and economic growth are becoming more significant in international power <...> new power resources, such as the capacity for effective communication and for <. > using international institutions, may prove more relevant”. There is a “more attractive way of exercising power than traditional means <...> This second aspect of power -- which occurs when one country gets other countries want what it wants -- may be called co-optive or soft power”. Geir Lundestad considers that soft power was the monopoly of the West, “unlike the Soviet Union, which frequently had to rely on force, the United States was generally encouraged to take a more active interest in the outside world”. As Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis writes, by “empire” he means “a situation in which a single state shapes the behaviour of others, whether directly or indirectly, partially or completely, by means that can range from the outright use of force through intimidation, dependency, inducements, and even inspiration”. In the Eastern bloc, this inspirational role was devoted to official literary production.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the very idea of imperialism applied to this place of the world seems to have lost its accuracy. However, even now the Russian Federation remains the biggest territory reviving its imperial past often associated with President Putin's policies. Let us glance at the evolution of this imperial narrative in the discourse of some remarkable contemporary Russian politicians and intellectuals. The writer and political dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) considered that the Bolshevik revolution was a tragedy in Russian history, and that the genuine cultural and political roots of Russia are to be found in tsarism and orthodoxy, and he wanted to get rid of the “imperial doping”.

The geopolitician Aleksandr Dugin (born in 1962), the leader of neo-eurasianism, was inspired by Sir MacKinder's theory and identifies Russia with the Eurasian “heartland”. Following the Slavophil tradition, he considers that Russia is the leader of the Eurasian space called to face the “Atlantic imperialism”. He praises Russian messianism and wants to restore the empire, supporting strategic alliances with Germany, Japan, and Iran.

For the Director General of Roscosmos -- and former Russia's ambassador to NATO -- Dmitri Rogozin (born in 1963), “the Russian land has grown not by a process of colonization, but by the appropriation of big spaces without any violence. The Russian national consciousness was thus shaped jointly with the other ethnic groups living near by. Because of the wealth and natural resources, Russian people used to always be in a defensive position. This perception of one's own territory is peculiar to an imperialistic view. It is an innate imperialism of large spaces that allows the territorial unity between Kaliningrad to the Kouriles Islands to be maintained. “Empire” is supposed to perceive this land as common, on a scale of “humanity” in the Dostoevskian sense”.

As a result, even at the turn of the twenty-first century, there is a persistence of the imperial paradigm in Russian political discourse, but some questions remain: is it really a remnant of the tsarist -- or the Soviet -- empire, a host from the past hovering over the collective memory? Or, does it make any sense in today's reality? And how does it appear in fiction that, being no longer directed by the State, mirrors the cultural and political climate of its time?

Looking back at Russian imperial consciousness, let us switch from the concept of “Empire by fiction” to the phenomenon of imperial fiction. As noted above, there is a mutual interdependence between the geopolitical architecture (empire) and the official literary production. Both reinforce each other: in the case of a growing empire, politics tends to support the imperial literature to legitimize their strategic aspirations. This literature has the effect of the empire-builder, creating symbolical political alliance and a feeling of historic necessity. Hence, the empire grows and strengthens thanks to its imperial narrative. Today one is surprised by the lack of imperial fiction. Russian contemporary prose is rather introspective, self-centred, if not minimalist. This is true even for authors of military prose like Andrei Guelassimov, who describes the war in Chechnya in Thirst (2002) through the prism of shame, vodka and despair -- far from the epic times of Socialist Realism. I think this vacuum of imperial fiction is proof that, arguably, Putin's Russia is not a new imperial state, but rather a construction built up from memory blocks mostly extending into its own past. Russian imperial consciousness is passive, bequeathed by tsarist times and the Soviet Union, and echoes the geographical scale of the country.

The study of the enemy in Maltsev's novel gives us insight into the imperial policy of the late Stalinist Soviet Union, pointing out a specific way of using literary diplomacy in order to avoid any “ideological dissonance”. The creative impetus displayed by Stalinist prose is noteworthy, consisting in assigning their roles to political enemies inside the Soviet narrative. I call it “Tarpeian book” because it is a reminder of the punishment of the traitors in ancient Rome. In this sense, the Soviet `Empire by fiction' demonstrates a high symbolic component in spite of its materialistic dimension. To put it differently and resort to Nye's terminology, the Soviet Union was no less a soft power than a hard one.

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