The Soviet communist regime that prevailed in Russia since the Great October Revolution in 1917 till the fall of communism in Russia and East Europe in 1991 has been all along a thematic stream for literary works and political confabulations. The rise of a huge socialist state at the outset of the twentieth century through the blood-spilling abolition of monarchy was a massive political upheaval of that time that rocked the world.
The boundless spontaneity and sky-high enthusiasm of Russian peasants, workers, students, intellectuals, authors and poets paved the way for the emergence of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The ideology of Karl Marx and the charismatic leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin gave birth to an unprecedented political phenomenon that the world had never witnessed before.
The watchwords of eradicating class inequity and providing state-sponsored privileges to all citizens equitably resonated through all towns and villages of Russia. Lenin became a paragon of iconic heights -worshipped, applauded and venerated by his countrymen.
Eminent Russian poets of that period like Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin glorified the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution through their verses. Russian musicians composed heroic songs to eulogize Lenin. Ten Days That Shook the World, an illustrious book by American writer and journalist John Reed narrates the thrill and melodramatic effect of the October Revolution that overwhelmed the Russian masses in 1917.
With the passage of time Joseph Stalin secured the top state power of Russia and he led Russia through the World War II victoriously and transformed Soviet Union into a formidable super power. Stalin's image as a ruler sparked off mixed reactions from his compatriots as well as from political analysts of other countries. Most of the critics convey the opinion that, Joseph Stalin governed Russia in a ruthless, ironhanded manner with very little tolerance to his opponents.
Even after Stalin's tenure in power, the authoritarianism of Russian ruling hierarchy did not pass off. A good number of Russian litterateurs and scholars deplored the Russian rulers during the Cold War era for their stringent surveillance over speeches and publications. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Roman Jakobson and Ivan Bunin are some of them. Roman Jakobson left Russia a few years after the Communist Revolution and settled down in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia (present day Czech Republic).
Roman Jakobson developed very close bonds with some leading Czech intellectuals and literary figures of that time such as Rene Wellek and Vilem Mathesius and together they founded the Prague School of Linguistics that produced some vital linguistic theories which are taught in a lot of universities worldwide till today.
Ivan Bunin, on the other hand, was a celebrated Russian poet and novelist who was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1933. Ivan Bunin also had to spend a good number of years in France, Bulgaria and few other countries to avoid the intense censorship that the Russian authorities enforced on books and newspapers.
Many western critics share the notion that, Joseph Stalin and his socialist successors digressed from the original communist ideology upheld by Karl Marx and Lenin. Russia, according to those western denigrators, became an all the more draconian state allowing virtually no liberty to authors, poets and journalists to express their views freely.
To poke fun at the Stalinist regime, George Orwell, a renowned English author, wrote Animal Farm, an allegoric fable that depicts the audacity of some pigs who became so insolent and powerful that they ousted their farm- owner and started to run the farm with their own wanton rules.
They gradually chucked away the idea of equity among all animals and secured special amenities only for some leading pigs of that farm. No one was authorized to speak out a single word against the prevailing autocracy. George Orwell resembles Jonathan Swift, one of the best-known Irish authors of 18th century whose masterpiece Gulliver's Travels sardonically satirized the British royal authorities of that period for their whims and fancies.
Animal Farm and Gulliver's Travels both are highly acclaimed political lampoons that entertained as well as enraged millions of readers simultaneously. In another dystopian novel titled 1984, George Orwell fictionalized a horrendously repressive state with all out control by the government over everything where anyone found involved in independent thinking or cherishing individualistic ideas was severely persecuted.
It should be noted that George Orwell did not hate communism at all. Rather he wanted the communist leaders to adhere to the ideology of egalitarianism and justice. A significant political movement that took place in Czechoslovakia (present day Czech Republic) in 1968 was Prague Spring. Alexander Dubcek, the pioneer of Prague Spring came up with some bold initiatives to bring about some reforms to liberalize socialist restrictions on Czech publishers, authors and intellectuals.
He wanted to extend a broader scale of freedom to the writers, scholars and journalists of his country but his attempts were not at all approved by the Soviet Union and its allies. Rather Russian forces along with troops of some other pro-Soviet states invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to hold down the uprising spearheaded by the organizers of Prague Spring.
Milan Kundera, the most reputed Czech author of current time portrayed how Prague Spring impacted the lives of common Czech citizens in his widely read novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The Czech communist regime imposed an embargo on the publication and sale of this book. However, the ban on The Unbearable Lightness of Being was lifted when communism collapsed in Czechoslovakia in 1990 like some other countries in East Europe.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a moving tale of Tomas and Tereza, the leading figures of the novel, who went through a lot of adverse circumstances during the totalitarian communist rule in Czechoslovakia. They gradually got too depressed to continue living in Prague because of the bleak political scenario of the city and left for the Czech countryside.
Milan Kundera sketched the socialist government in Czechoslovakia in very derogatory terms in The Unbearable Lightness of Being even though the narrative style of the novel remains more or less melancholic. Milan Kundera reaches the height of immortal authors like Charles Dickens, John Masters and Sir Walter Scott by describing historic events in a magnificent way through his fictional excellence.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being reminds us of the spellbinding portrayal of French Revolution in Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, the thrilling incidents that took place during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 breathtakingly described by John Masters in his novel Nightrunners of Bengal and the story of the third crusade between the Christian forces and the Muslim Caliphate presented by Sir Walter Scott in his fabulous novel The Talisman. As the Czech reformists who hailed Prague Spring were gagged by the Soviet invasion in 1968, Milan Kundera became disillusioned. He left Czechoslovakia in 1975 and migrated to France. The Czech government of that time revoked his Czech citizenship in 1979.
He has been a French citizen since 1981. Even in an earlier novel titled The Joke Milan Kundera had scoffed at the communist ruling authorities of Czechoslovakia. However, the Czech rulers removed Milan Kundera's name from their blacklist after the fall of communism. He was awarded Czech State Literature Prize in 2007. Before that he had achieved The Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1987. He received the Ovid Prize as well in 2011. Moreover, he was shortlisted for Nobel Prize for literature a number of times even though the award has not been yet conferred to him. Both The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being have been translated into most of the major languages of the world.
Milan Kundera's stories vibrate with an existential undertone, an intrepid resonance against discrimination and tyranny and a deep observation of the dreams, enigmas and agonies that enclose our lives in blithe as well as untoward situations. It's hard to put down a book by Milan Kundera once we start to go through it, because by means of his splendid narrative quality and outstanding rhetoric, he makes us familiar with the untold stories of millions of people who are constantly seeking answers to the confounding riddles posed by their lives.
The writer is a literary analyst for
The Asian Age
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