Praising Stalin’s nomenklatura in The Bearer of the Golden Star: The novel by Semyon Babayevsky and the film by Yuliy Raizman

Abstract

One of the most popular novels in late Stalinist USSR, The Bearer of the Golden Star (1947–1948) by Semyon Babayevsky, is seen now as a representative symbol of “grand” or “varnishing” style in literature – to the same measure as the eponymous film (1950) by Yuliy Raizman did for the Soviet cinematic tradition. High official status of both texts guaranteed by Stalin’s awards matched the overwhelming success they both enjoyed with general public. The author here makes an attempt to examine the possible reasons of this popularity and offers a look at The Bearer of the Golden Star as at panorama both of a newborn after the World War II privileged social stratum, nomenklatura, and a system of social elevators leading to it – as much demanded by its target audience. The modes of fictional re-interpretation of real bureaucratic procedures are considered as well as the authors’ dealing with the key characters representing different nomenklatural positions; and also some «ethnographic» characters used to blur the border between social strata, so that the Soviet “new ruling class” could still be seen as an integral part of “working people”. The paper also deals with operational mechanisms of manipulative political metaphors and with those means Semyon Babayevsky and Yuliy Raizman used to ensure the highest possible level of propaganda impact. Special attention is also paid to the figure of Stalin as the key element in the “Grand style” mythology that form a hidden suggestive structer of the text.  

Keywords

• semyon babayevsky
• yuliy raizman
• the bearer of the golden star
• nomenklatura
• stalinist “grand style”