Breaking Stalin's Nose

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-15

Chapters 16-22

Chapters 23-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Obsession With Status

Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to violent repression and antisemitism.

Yelchin depicts Russian society as obsessed with rank and status. From a young age, children such as Sasha desire the red scarf as a token of recognition for their dedication to communism and Stalin. Sasha doesn’t only value the scarf for personal validation, however; he also sees it as a badge of honor that will validate his commitment and good standing in front of his classmates. Comrade Stukachov, the neighbor who reports Zaichik so that he can take over the biggest room in the apartment, displays a more nefarious preoccupation with asserting his status. Although Stukachov covets the larger and more luxurious room for practical reasons too (Stukachov has a large family that is cramped in a smaller room), he smiles and takes pleasure in deposing Zaichik from his higher position on the social hierarchy.

Yelchin explores how The Obsession With Status is reflected in Russian culture, including within its literature, by incorporating two famous Russian writers in the story: Nikolai Gogol and Anton Chekov. Both writers delivered biting satirical commentary on the corrosive Russian obsession with rank.

The novel’s title and Stalin’s sentient nose that features in Chapter 25 allude to Gogol’s short story “The Nose,” written in 1836. In Gogol’s story, a civil servant wakes up one day to find that his nose is missing and is pursuing its own ambitions. Both Gogol’s nose and Yelchin’s nose represent blind faith in rank and status. In Yelchin’s story, it is only after breaking Stalin’s statue that Sasha can liberate himself from his blind faith in Stalinism and see through the propaganda to the truth of Stalin’s purge. In Breaking Stalin’s Nose, the character Nikolai Ivanych is the head of State Security. He gets a group of workers to confess to a crime they didn’t commit while he enjoys his high rank and status. Nikolai Ivanych is an allusion to Nikolai Ivanich, a character from Chekov’s short story “Gooseberries”, written in 1898. Chekov’s story highlights how bureaucrats trample others to get ahead only to live in a false sense of happiness. In this way, both Nikolais demonstrate how people pursue the material luxury that status affords even at the expense of their morality.

Yelchin references these two Russian stories to show how Russian society and culture were preoccupied with status even before Stalin’s rise to power, emphasizing how deeply rooted the issue is.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Existential Crisis of Facing the Truth

Cognitive dissonance is “the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other” (“Cognitive Dissonance.” Psychology Today). At the beginning of the novel, Sasha is an ardent supporter of Stalinism. He believes in the superiority of communism in the USSR to the economic systems of other countries. He understands the Soviet Union to be democratic, even though the conditions he describes do not resemble a democratic system. More than anything, Sasha wants to join the Young Pioneers, an organization that indoctrinates young people into Soviet philosophy and prepares them to be good Soviet citizens. He declares an ardent desire to serve Comrade Stalin and fight against the capitalists. Over two days, Sasha begins to express thoughts that reveal the cognitive dissonance that surrounds him. These new sensations disturb him even though he clings to the simplified party line he knows. He believes fanatically in Stalinism but also expresses faith in the innocence of people he knows whom the Security Service arrests. He cannot reconcile the two beliefs.

Sasha must choose how to respond to the discomfort he faces because of the clash of his worldview with his current reality. In the hall that bears Stalin’s banner, he imagines himself waving to Stalin and telling him about his father’s arrest. Stalin replies, “Who made this mistake? Who’s responsible? Arrest them! Arrest them all!” (73). Sasha believes in Stalinism so strongly that he believes his father’s arrest was a mistake that will be corrected by the Great Leader himself. Later, however, he is pained when he tries to rationalize other “mistakes”: “I start thinking about it but get nowhere. It’s too confusing,” he says after he learns the state executed Vovka’s dad (103). He cannot believe that his father, Vovka’s father, and others are truly enemies of the people. He also cannot believe that Stalin, or State Security, would make such mistakes. Both cannot be true, thus Sasha spends most of the novel in denial of the facts, though his lived experience directly contradicts his faith in Stalinism and the State.

Eventually, Sasha experiences an existential crisis as he stands outside the great hall. He can choose to step into the hall that proudly displays Stalin’s banner, and spy for State Security or he can exit the farce through the doorway behind him. He realizes he can run from what he feels more than knows to be false, but he also realizes the consequences for running will be dire. Finally, Sasha breaks out of the discomfort caused by the cognitive dissonance with which he struggles. “I take a last look at the banner, turn away, and dash out the back door, down the stairs, and out of the school. I don’t want to be a Pioneer” (141).

The Human Ability to Survive Tyrants and Preserve Humanity

The novel Breaking Stalin’s Nose portrays a bleak view of the USSR during Stalin’s Great Terror. The narrative depicts arrests, persecution, false charges, betrayal, and the pervasive rumor of extra-judicial executions. Nevertheless, two acts of kindness by strangers bookend Sasha’s narrative. These two kindnesses offer hope that Stalin’s reign will neither outlast nor corrupt the human spirit. Good persists in furtive glances and secret compassion amid the desolation of the Great Terror as the oppressed populace waits for hard times to end so humanity can be restored.

In the novel’s opening, Sasha experiences a random act of kindness. “Our neighbor, Marfa Ivanovna, gives me a treat—a carrot” (9). Later, Sasha reveals that Ivanovna, “lives in a cubbyhole next to the toilet” (33). This woman, who has nothing and suffers the indignity of living beside a toilet shared by the 48 residents of the communal apartment, generously treats a little boy. She asks for nothing in return and her gift pleases Sasha. Sasha reveals his ignorance of the rest of the world when he muses that children outside of the USSR don’t have snacks as delicious as this carrot. Despite this irony, the old woman’s kindness signals hope at the beginning of the novel, though it is quickly forgotten in the turmoil and pain of the events perpetrated by evil and desperate characters that follow.

In the novel’s last chapter, an unnamed woman waits outside the Lubyanka to see her imprisoned son. Despite her suffering, she gives the scarf she made for her son to Sasha, who waits beside her in the hope that he will be allowed to see his father. “She doesn’t even ask if I’m hungry, just takes out something wrapped in a cloth and hands it to me. I unwrap it—a baked potato, still hot. She stares at me while I eat it” (148). She then offers Sasha her son’s now empty cot. “I look up at her and see that she’s smiling. Her smile is kind and natural” (149). This moment is juxtaposed with Sasha’s mistreatment at the hands of others and recalls the gift of the carrot from the start of the story, wrapping the book’s ending in a shroud of hope.

The kind woman waiting in line to see her son in Lubyanka Prison doesn’t just deliver the final hopeful note, she embodies it. “‘What a mess we got ourselves into, huh, Zaichik? Think we can sort it out one day?’ I don’t know. ‘We will,’ she says. ‘But for now, we have a lot of waiting to do. So let’s wait, Zaichik.’ And we do” (151). This final sentence is a direct historical reference to how Russians waited out Stalin (who died in 1953) and his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, who ended the purges by the NKVD and closed the gulags but still operated repressive systems. Russians waited out three other authoritarian leaders before the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.