Breaking Stalin's Nose

“They look like they are afraid, but I know they are just respectful.”

Sasha completely misunderstands his father throughout the novel. When their apartment co-inhabitants grow quiet and compliant around his father, he understands this to be respect rather than fear. His father is a member of the State Security, the secret police force that monitors society for signs of rebellion, dissent, or anti-communist sentiment. Whether credible or not, people are hauled away and never seen again, and it is the State Security Office that is behind these disappearances. That the residents fear Sasha’s father is an understatement. Sasha is incapable of understanding that his father is one of the men who pull citizens out of society to be tortured and killed by the State.

“I can’t imagine anybody who would dare to damage a monument to Comrade Stalin, but there are some bad characters out there. Obviously, they’re always caught.”

In a line that later reveals itself to be foreshadowing, Sasha marvels that anyone would damage a statue of The Great Leader and knows that those who do are caught and punished. Later in the novel, Sasha accidentally damages a statue of Stalin, which results in his loss of a place in the Young Pioneers, his exile from society, and the loss of social rank. Moments before this thought, Sasha recalled how his father caught a gang wrecking the massive statue outside his window, and celebrated the thought that his father caught them. Again, Sasha is incapable of thinking that the wreckers might have been innocent, their act of protest justified, or that his father might have condemned men to death over simple vandalism.

“I stare at the statue and pretend it is Comrade Stalin himself, watching over Moscow from his great height. His steady eyes track a legion of shiny black dots zipping up and down the snow-white streets.”

The black dots turn out to be State Security cars coming to arrest Sasha’s father. The inclusion of the Stalin statue watching as the secret police rush to arrest a falsely accused man is a testament to Yelchin’s view that Stalin was aware of and complicit in the deaths, chaos, and turmoil that occurred during his reign. The statue watches over all of Moscow, where the Great Terror is in full swing. Lubyanka prison is full, and a line of thousands stand outside hoping to see imprisoned loved ones.

“‘It’s me, Stukachov. I made the report,’ he says, smiling and bobbing his head at the passing uniforms. ‘Comrade Stalin appreciates your vigilance, citizen,’ says the officer.”

Stukachov admits he reported Sasha’s father, and that he did so to get the larger apartment unit that Sasha and his father shared. Despite the questionable motives behind the report that condemns Sasha’s father, the officer making the arrest makes no move to halt the arrest. He mutters a form of thanks, himself a prisoner of the system that he helps to enforce. There is no justice in these actions, and those making the arrests know this.

“‘He’ll enjoy the orphanage,’ he says to his wife. ‘All nice children.’”

To assuage himself of his guilt of having Sasha’s father arrested to take over the larger living space, Stukachov says this line to his wife. The unfortunate insinuation is that the children in the orphanage are good. This contradicts his rationalization for kicking Sasha out of the apartment because his father was arrested and Sasha is now a pariah. He knows he harmed a “good” child for selfish gain.

“The guard blows a whistle and other whistles join in. Suddenly, guards are everywhere. One slips and falls, and his pistol goes off like a whip crack. At the far end of the square a black automobile turns the corner, headlights slashing me in half.”

Sasha decides to go to the Kremlin to see Stalin and explain the mishap of his father’s arrest. In Red Square, however, a guard stops him. Sasha is an unarmed 10-year-old boy in an oversized coat and boots, skinny from hunger, and yet he represents a threat to the regime. With this imagery, Yelchin hints at the fragility of a system built on terror. The system is fragile to the point of extreme violence, so insecure in its power and its mandates that to prop it up, even children were victimized.

“‘I’m sorry, Sasha,’ she says. ‘If we take you in, they’ll arrest us, too. We just had a baby. We have to stay alive.’”

Aunt Larisa will not take Sasha in. For the first time in his life, Sasha confronts the extent of the brutality of the Great Terror that took place between 1936 and 1938. So dangerous is dissent that taking in an orphaned child could, as Aunt Larisa suggests, lead to death. This scene, along with other imagery, exposes the absurdity of the principles of Stalinism.

“Forget about your dad, kid. Your dad’s an enemy of the people. Don’t you get it? They don’t allow kids of enemies to join the Pioneers.”

The night of his arrest, Sasha’s dad told Sasha to go to Aunt Larisa if anything happened to him. This is what Sasha does after his futile attempt to visit Stalin at the Kremlin. When he arrives, however, he’s met with rejection. In addition to learning that they will not help him out of fear for their own lives, he learns that his one dream, to join the Young Pioneers, cannot be.

“After all the bad things that happened last night, this crazy ride is so exciting and fun that I start laughing.”

On the way to school the morning after his father’s arrest and his rejection from Aunt Larisa, Sasha rides the streetcar. It is crowded and he hangs onto the outside, the wind whipping his face. The rush of joy, adrenaline, and child-like glee is a reminder that Sasha is a child. He innocently laughs when he is happy, cries when he is sad and lives in a confusing time and place where he loses his parents and his home overnight.

“Vovka Sobakin used to sit in my place, but now he’s in the back, in Kolyma, with all the bad ones. We call the back row Kolyma because Kolyma is a faraway region in our country where Stalin sends those who don’t deserve to live and work among the honest people.”

In addition to once being the star pupil, Vovka was once Sasha’s best friend. His grades and mood changed after his father was arrested by State Security and executed. These lines demonstrate the extent of the social exile the children of arrested adults experienced. Not only were they banished to the back, but they were labeled as “bad ones,” and compared to the dissidents that Stalin sent to the Kolyma gulags. The children become immune to and complicit in the schemes of societal control, which rely on tactics of fear, isolation, and harassment. Joking about gulags normalizes their function in society and prepares students to participate as adults in the mechanisms that include gulags.

“Finkelstein refuses to cooperate with authority, which is me, the teacher. In capitalist countries, the teacher would decide whether to admit Finkelstein back into the classroom or send him to the principal to receive his punishment. But remember, children, the Soviet classroom is the most democratic in the world. You will decide his fate. You will vote.”

Shortly after this line, teacher Petrovna informs anyone who votes against the majority that they will be punished as well. This is an example of the cognitive dissonance the children's lives are steeped in. They understand the concept of voting, but understand, also, that voting is only permitted with the majority. They understand that the Soviet classroom is democratic, but that their opinions must follow doctrine. Words, in this world, have little mining in light of their malleable and oftentimes contradictory usage.

“‘My mom and dad are real Communists, too,’ Four-Eyes says. ‘They are in Lubyanka prison now—enemies of the people.’”

Finkelstein, also known as Four-Eyes because he wears glasses, attempts to explain to Sasha that his mother, the American, was labeled a spy. This is an idea Sasha does not entertain because he still believes in the system, even though his mother is gone, and his father was arrested the previous night. He believes his parents were good communists, and that there has been a misunderstanding. He cannot reconcile recent events with the facts as he knows them. Finkelstein, who knows the truth and has suffered because of it, understands that being a good communist does not ensure one’s safety in Stalin’s USSR. Borka has broken away from the cognitive dissonance and is a lonely outsider as a result.

“First, I will never become a Pioneer. Second, the principal will telephone State Security to report an act of terrorism in his school. Third, everybody will find out who did it. Next, the guards will arrive to arrest me. It won’t be a mistake like with my dad: I should be arrested. Son of a hero and a Communist, I have become an enemy of the people, a wrecker.”

Sasha breaks Stalin’s nose off the statue in the hall and immediately understands that his life will now be forever changed. It was a simple accident, a boy playing with a flag, marching around while enjoying a moment of daydreaming. Sasha will be punished, and he does not question the justice of arrest and exile from the Pioneers, nor does he see the absurdity.

“‘Destruction or damage of state property shall be punishable by the supreme measure of social defense—proclaiming the guilty an enemy of the people and shooting by firing squad,’ he says. ‘Criminal Code of the Soviet Union, Article 58.’”

Vovka, whose father has been arrested and executed, catches Sasha’s act of destruction and recites the penal code for him in the bathroom where Sasha is hiding. The stakes are death by firing squad if Vovka reveals the truth to anyone. The pressure and emotional turmoil around such stakes are heavy burdens for such young, impressionable children. And yet, Vovka is already disillusioned with the state, and Sasha is experiencing his moment of awakening.

“‘Just make sure you are right. You know what will happen if even one name on your list turns out to be unreliable?’ Zina shakes her head. She doesn’t know. ‘You, yourself will be suspected,’ says Nina Petrovna.”

After the Stalin statue is found missing a nose, teachers bring their students to attention and demand answers. One child in Sasha’s class asks what to do if she doesn’t know who did it. This is the teacher’s response. She then indicates that each student should write Vovka’s name since his parents are enemies of the state, and she threatens the students to ensure their compliance. Again, the innocence of the children is squashed by the system, which pits people against one another.

“Nina Petrona rises, walks to where the group photograph of our class hangs on the wall, and blackens Four-Eye’s face with her ink pen. That’s what we always do the pictures of enemies of the people, and it usually feels good, but not this time.”

After State Security officers take Borka Finkelstein away, the teacher defiles his picture and the students return to the classroom. Sasha believed his father was innocent but the police arrested him anyway. He knows for certain that Borka is innocent because he, Sasha, committed the crime for which the police arrested Borka. Twice he sees evidence that the State arrests innocent people. There is enough evidence for Sasha to challenge the official narrative about Stalin’s USSR, but he is not ready to break away from it.

“‘You know, children, that Sobakin’s father was executed as an enemy of the people,’ says Nina Petrovna. ‘Does it explain his hideous anti-Soviet behavior and the fact that he was conspiring with Finkelstein? What do you think, children?’”

Petrovna reveals Vovka’s secret, the reason his attitude changes suddenly, and why he is no longer friends with Sasha. The State took Vovka’s father, just as they took Sasha’s. Vovka’s natural trauma response to losing his father is mischaracterized as proof that he, too, is an enemy of the state.

“He was a good Soviet citizen, modest, a devout communist. How could he be a wrecker? I start thinking about it but get nowhere. It’s just too confusing.”

The bulk of the novel shows Sasha’s slow transformation from a devout communist under Stalin’s reign to a disillusioned orphan who, finally, sees through the propaganda the horrible truth of the society he lives in. Although there have been many, many instances for Sasha to realize he was being told something contradictory to the facts he witnessed with his own eyes, he was incapable of verbalizing this cognitive dissonance. Sitting beside Vovka after his former best friend learns of his father’s execution, he starts to articulate the confusion he feels.

“Finally we got rid of that Jew, Finkelstein. That might have satisfied the authorities for a while. But no, you had to get in trouble. I'm sending you both to the orphanage. Case closed.”

The school’s principal speaks with Sasha and Vovka, who has just attacked Nina Petrovna for telling the class that his father was executed as a wrecker. State Security orphaned both boys and authorities will now send them to the orphanage for the enemy’s children. This line highlights how children in the school are pawns to the system, a trade-off that keeps State Security to keep them at bay. Instead of protecting and nurturing children, school authorities see them as expendable, an offering to save their adult skins.

“‘What “The Nose” so vividly demonstrates to us today,’ says Luzhko, ‘is that when we blindly believe in someone else’s idea of what is right or wrong for us as individuals, eventually our refusal to make our own choices could lead to the collapse of the entire political system. An entire country. The world, even.’”

The Russian literature teacher, Luzhko, delivers the thematic heart of the novel, which he found in the Nikolai Gogol short story, “The Nose.” Fittingly, in Sasha’s world, Stalin’s nose is broken off the statue, and will soon become sentient in his daydream. The two stories have many comparisons, including a satirical poke at the Russian fixation on rank and social status. This, in Sasha’s world, is what is stripped away from someone first, as was done with Finkelstein and Vovka, and now Sasha.

“For some people, four walls are three too many. One wall’s enough for a firing squad.”

These words are spoken by Stalin’s sentient nose, perched on a chair wearing boots and a Soviet uniform while smoking a pipe. As in the Nikolai Gogol story, the nose has rank, status, and power, and speaks down to Sasha.

“‘Once I received a delegation of workers from the provinces. When they left, I looked for my pipe but did not see it. I called the Chairman of the State Security. ‘Nikolai Ivanych, my pipe disappeared after the visit of the workers.’ ‘Yes, comrade Stalin, I’ll immediately take the proper measures.’ Ten minutes later I pulled out a drawer in my desk and saw my pipe. I dialed the State Security Again. ‘Nikolai Ivanych, my pipe’s been found.’ ‘What a shame,’ he said. ‘All of the workers have already confessed.’”

This story is told to Sasha by Stalin’s sentient nose, who laughs after completing the tale. The story mirrors how innocent people under Stalin confessed to crimes they didn’t commit and were punished accordingly. After telling the story, Stalin’s sentient nose tells Sasha to confess, renounce his father, and join the Pioneers because his father is gone for good. He will confess to crimes he didn’t commit, and he will be executed. The name Nikolai Ivanych recalls both a famous Chekov short story, “Gooseberries,” as well as the real-life head of Stalin’s 1936-38 Great Terror, who was himself executed.

“We’re offering you a rare opportunity to pledge assistance to the Soviet State Security. All you have to do is listen in, observe, and report suspicious behavior right here in your own school. Let your deep-felt devotion to Communism be your guide. You’ll be our secret agent, like your dad.”

The man who arrested Sasha’s father now offers him redemption through complicity and compliance. If Sasha spies on his peers, his life will return to normal. He can join the Young Pioneers and regain his status in society. This decision is balanced against an alternative that involves him going to prison, like his father. He accepts, knowing there is no alternative. In the Author’s Note accompanying the book, Yelchin explains that as a child, he was interrogated by State Security for hours, eventually escaping by playing dumb. He wrote this important scene into his novel to show how important it is to make tough decisions in impossible circumstances.