Triumph of Vol’ka: Stalin and his Era in the Fairy Tale of L. Lagin "Old Man Khottabych"

Abstract

The ideological bias of the author of the fairy tale Old Man Khottabych compels the reader to take into account not the literary but the political context of the work. For the first time the fairy tale was published in the Pioneer journal (issues 10-12) in 1938. In the spring of this year, Moscow witnessed the Case of the Anti-Soviet «Bloc of Rightist and Trotskyites», and even the children’s press (including the Pioneer magazine) was forced to report its results. Khottabych is hopelessly archaic. Several thousand years of imprisonment in a pottery vessel did not pass without consequences. He is absolutely helpless in the country of the implemented utopia. The old djinn could understand and fully approve only the Stalinist policy of mass repression because he himself, like the OGPUNKVD authorities, is much inclined to excessive and often poorly motivated use of violence. In this respect, the Soviet system differs little from the eastern tyrannies. Khottabych is eager to burn to ashes (to turn into a toads or sell into slavery etc.) teachers, waitresses, policemen – in short, everyone who, in his opinion, is not sufficiently respectful of his young Lord Vol’ka Kostylkov. The fairy-tale world of Lazar Lagin mirrored the Soviet  Reality.