"novyi satirikon," 1914-1918: the patriotic laughter of the russian liberal intelligentsia...

"Novyi Satirikon," 1914-1918: The Patriotic Laughter of the Russian Liberal Intelligentsiaduring the First World War and the RevolutionAuthor(s): Lesley MilneSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Oct., 2006), pp. 639-665Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4214359 .

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SEER, Vol. 84, No. 4, October 2006

Novyi Satirikon, I9I4-I9I8:

The Patriotic Laughter of the

Russian Liberal Intelligentsia

during the First World War and

the Revolution

LESLEY MILNE

THE subject of 'the intelligentsia and the Revolution' has always been central to debates on Russian culture of the I920S, with ramifications that extend throughout the subsequent decades of the Soviet regime. Patriotism plays a key but problematic role in the response by the Russian liberal intelligentsia to the Revolution. It is key because it can be viewed as an important determining factor. It was rendered problematic, however, because the concept of Russian patriotism was not consonant with the socialist internationalist ideology of the ultimate victors in the revolutionary struggle, the Bolshevik party that concluded a separate peace with Germany and took Russia out of the First World War in spring I9I8. In its time, I908 to i9i8, Satirikon/Nozyi Satirikon was the foremost satirical journal in Russia, widely read across a broad spectrum of educated, politically aware society. As a journal of humour and satire, it used laughter both to entertain and to attack, thus illumin- ing the daily life of its readers and expressing their political concerns. Dominant among these concerns was the patriotic ideal of dismantling the tsarist autocracy and transforming Russia into a liberal democratic state, a project that can be summed up as 'saving Russia'. When war broke out in the summer of 19I4, the patriotic project of 'saving Russia' took on a drastic new dimension. The aim of the present study is to approach the theme of 'the intelligentsia and the Revolution' through the concept of 'saving Russia' as expressed in the journal Novyi Satirikon and its patriotic stance during the First World War.

When it started life in I908 Satirikon quickly established itself as a barometer of educated public opinion. Particularly popular with the

Lesley Milne is Professor in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham.

The material for this article was collected in Moscow on a research visit funded by the British Academy, to which I should like to express my gratitude. I should also like to thank Violetta Gudkova, who helped me locate certain key numbers of the journal.



640 NOVYI SATIRIKON, 19I4-I9I8

youth students in the universities and senior schools its reach also stretched to deputies in the State Duma and Ministers and Senators in the State Council, where it would be quoted in debates.' In June 1913 a financial dispute between its publisher and a group of its core contributors led to a walk-out by the latter, who founded a new journal on co-operative principles and gave it the name Novyi Satirikon. For a period, until spring I914, there were two competing 'Satirikons' on tlhe market, but in its first issue the 'new' journal had affirmed that the line of legitimate inheritance had passed from Satirikon to Nogyi Satirikon, and the readership duly confirmed this assessment of affairs by transferring loyalty to this 'new' Satirikon, which flourished, while its rival, st;ill bearing the original title, failed.2 Thus the 'brand name' of Satirikon encompasses also Novyi Satirikon, which ran until August I9I8, when the Bolshevik government closed it down. Although it was published over only one decade, in the annals of Russian satirical journalism in the twentieth century the title Satirikon was to become a legend, a benchmark, a model. Several attempts were made to revive it: in emigration, in Paris in 193I and in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1951; again in post-Soviet Moscow in 1997. These attempts at revival, although all short-lived, indicate the resonance of the journal's name and the importance of its legacy for Russian intellectual culture.

Novyi Satirikon had adopted an aggressively anti-Bolshevik stance, and its editor, Arkadii Averchenko, went into emigration, as did several of its core contributors. This created obvious complications for any assessment of the journal by Soviet scholars, but in the I960s the area began to open up for study and some of the works of those who had emigrated were republished.3 This process culminated in I968 when Liudmila Evstigneeva devoted a book to the journal and its poet;s.4 Although Evstigneeva was operating within a clearly marked Soviet ideological framework, she nonetheless provided an extremely useful overview and communicated a genuine appreciation. A book on Russian satirical literature of the early twentieth century, which she published in I977 under the name of Spiridonova, contained an exten- sive section on Satirikon/Novyi Satirikon, and restated her earlier views.5 Finally in I999, when the literature of the Russian emigration had been fully integrated into the cultural heritage, Spiridonova took her story

I L. Evstigneeva, Zhurnal 'Satirikon' i poey-satirikontsy, Moscow, I968 (hereafter, Zhumal 'Satirikon'), pp. 82, ii8, 366, 398.

2 Ibid., pp. io6, IO9.

3Arkadii Averchenko, Iumoristicheskie rasskazy, Moscow, I964; Okkul'tnye nauki. Rasskazy, Moscow, I964; Izbrannye rasskazy, Moscow, I985. Nadezhda Teffi, Predskazatel' proshlogo, Moscow, I967; Rasskazy, Moscow, 1971.

4 See note i above. 5 L. A. Spiridonova, Russkaia satiricheskaia literatura nachala XX veka, Moscow, I977.



LESLEY MILNE 64I

forward by examining the emigre careers and writings of those 'satirikontsy' who had left their native land during the Civil War, never to return.6 The topic is treated with full sympathy for the pathos of their exile, and some degree of understanding also for their anti-Bolshe- vism. There is, however, one area that always remains outside the zone of comprehension, and that is the support by Novyi Satirikon of Russia's participation in the First World War.

The First World War has left no trace on the Russian collective memory: there are no cemeteries or memorials; the monuments in Russia are to the Revolution and the Second World War. What for the West was the Great War, one of the traumas of the twentieth century, became for post-Bolshevik Russia simply an episode, an alien 'imperialist war', terminated by a separate peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk in March I9I8. For Russians, this absence of memorials and memory blocks receptivity to the pathos of war-time patriotism in Russia during the First World War, and therefore also to the anguish of humiliation felt at the 'shameful' peace of Brest-Litovsk. Studies by Western scholars on the Great War in European cultural history have prompted reassessment of these issues by post-Soviet Russian historians.7 But too much time has passed for this to make an impact on the Russian popular consciousness: without powerful monuments in public spaces to create a will to remembrance, the First World War will continue to be an unfocused blur, its pathos inaccessible behind the massive hero- isms of the Second World War and the romanticism of the Revolution. The patriotic notes in Jfovyi Satirikon during the First World War were dismissed by Evstigneeva in I968 as forced and false, evidence of the journal's decline into a run-of-the-mill bourgeois periodical, and in I999 they are still described only as 'bloodthirsty yells'.8 Distress over Brest-Litovsk is accorded no mention at all in the earlier books and even in I999 it figures only in one clause of one sentence: 'By now [December I9I8] the passions around the Brest peace treaty had cooled.'9 Meanwhile, in Western scholarship, recent studies by

6 L. Spiridonova, Bessmertie smekha: komicheskoe v literature russkogo zarubezh 'ia, Moscow, I999 (hereafter, Bessmertie smekha).

'The works of Western scholarship are Paul Fussell, The Great War in Modern Memoy, London, 1975; Modris Eksteins, 7The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Boston, MA, i989; Jay Winter, Sites of Memogy, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural Histogy, Cambridge, I995. The Russian response is: Pervaia mirovaia voina: Prolog XX veka, ed. V. L. Mal'kov, Moscow, I998; Rossiia i pervaia mirovaia voina: Materialy mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo kollokviuma, St Petersburg, i999; Anatolii Utkin, Zabytaia tragediia: Rossiia v pervoi mirovoi voine, Smolensk, 2000; A. N. Utkin, Pervaia mirovaia voina, Moscow, 20oI; T. M. Kutanina, Rossiia v pervoi mirovoi voine IgI4-IgI7gg.: Ekonomika i ekonomicheskaia politika, vol. I of 2, St Petersburg, 2003.

8 Evstigneeva, Zhurnal 'Satirikon', pp. 121-22, 127-28; Spiridonova, Bessmertie smekha, pp. 177-78, 213-

' Spiridonova, Bessmertie smekha, p. 85.



642 NO VYI SATIRIKON, I9I 4-19i 8

Hubertus Jahn and Richard Stites have initiated discussion of patriotism and popular culture in Russia during World War One, providing a broader context in which to set Jfovyi Satirikon,io and Jahn mentions the journal itself." Neither Jahn nor Stites, however, takes the study beyond the February Revolution. Stites, while observing that the war 'was the central issue of I9I7', concludes that 'so tightly was it knotted to the revolutionary process that its history belongs to that epic struggle'. 12

Thus the key period between the two Revolutions of I917 when the war was indeed the central issue for Novyi Satirikon - is again left unexamined, as is the patriotic response to the 'catastrophe' of Brest- Litovsk. There is therefore a gap in the scholarly coverage, which the present study aims to close by focusing on Novyi Satirikon from the outbreak of war in summer 1914 until the journal's closure in August I9I8. Throughout these four years, with World War and Russia's role in the world as their context, the journal tracks the evolution of the patriotic concerns, hopes, illusions and fears of the Russian liberal intelligentsia at this crucial period in Russian history.

There are, of course, other sources from which this line can be reconstructed: newspapers, diaries, memoirs, works of literature. News- papers give a day-to-day editorialized reaction to events, while diaries give an individual response; memoirs and works of literature are bot:h individual and coloured by hindsight. As a weekly journal, Novyi Satirikon is valuable because it gives an immediate broad consensus of educated opinion without adherence to any specific political party. The journal's contributors were individuals, and the editorial policy was not prescriptive,'3 but they were a collective, united by a shared value system that could never be too far from the views of their readers. The journal was illustrated in colour (the advertisements boasted that nine colours were used), and this created particular constraints, with concomitant opportunities. The constraints were that the production process was fairly lengthy, and therefore items could not be too imme- diately topical, because an article or caricature comRosed on one date might reach its audience perhaps two weeks later. The thought cr

10 Hubertus F. Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia During World War I, Ithaca, NY and London, 1995 (hereafter, Jahn); Richard Stites, 'Days and Nights in Wartime Russia: Cultural Life, I914-1917', in Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites (eds), European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, I9I4-I9I8, Cambridge, I999, pp. 8-' I (hereafter, 'Days and Nights'). I am grateful to Nick Baron for helping me identify these sources at the outset of this project.

"Jahn, pp. 36-38. 12 Stites, 'Days and Nights', p. 31. 13 'Staryi zhurnalist' [0. L. D'Or, pseudonym of losif Orsher], Literatumnyi put'

dorevoliutsionnogo zhurnalista, Moscow and Leningrad, 1930, p. 94. 14 The lengthy production process is mentioned in Novyi Satirikon, No. 3I, 31 July 1914,

p. 7. Three years later, the editor, Arkadii Averchenko gives two weeks as the time between the writing of an article and its appearance ('Doskoi po golove', No. 35, September I9I7,

P. 3).



LESLEY MILNE 643 image thus had to be summative, the condensed expression of a trend rather than a moment. The journalistic discipline of generating such a summative image, week on week, while still retaining a readership, means that trends among the liberal intelligentsia are faithfully reflected. Finally, as a journal of satire and humour, the journal could retain its profile only by finding an acceptable role for laughter of whatever kind in its response to events. Its contributors were professional humorists, practised in finding ironies and incongruities, which involves the ability to reflect upon a topic from various angles. This makes the patriotism less strident and more readily accessible to us who inhabit a world very different from the Europe of summer 1914.

The outbreak of war presented a challenge to the journal. War is not funny, and only front-line soldiers have earned the right to joke about it as, for example, in 77ie Wipers Times, the celebrated trench newspaper of the British Expeditionary Force in France i9I6-I8.`5 Joking about war, however, is territory onto which home-front journal- ists trespass at their peril. Instinctive patriotism becomes problematic, moreover, when a journal stands in opposition to the government of the day. Satirikon and JVlovyi Satirikon, as the mouthpiece of the liberal democratic intelligentsia, had always taken as their benchmark the constitutional framework apparently granted by Tsar Nicholas II in October 1905, and when this framework was progressively rescinded, the journal directed its satirical barbs against the conservative and reactionary elements of the tsarist regime. An increasingly constrictive censorship imposed tight limits, of course the royal family and the imperial court could never be mentioned'6 but the journal had a strong anti-tsarist thrust. On the outbreak of war, however, JfNovyi Satirikon instantly declared a patriotic position.

This was not a complete volte-face, for in spring I9I4 the journal had run a special issue, 'On the Germans', articulating concern about German economic and military expansionism. The attempt to redefine this in terms of a wartime role for the journal was made in an editorial of No. 3I, which carried the date of 3I July. This was in the Julian (Old Style) Russian calendar, which ran thirteen days behind the Gregorian (New Style) calendar in use in Western Europe. The issue thus appeared on what was, in Western Europe, 13 August, by which time the First World War had fully begun.'8 The front cover carried an

15 Malcolm Brown (ed.), 7The Wipers Times: 7he Complete Series of the Famous Wartime Trench Newspaper, London, 2006.

16 Evstigneeva, Zhurnal 'Satirikon', p. ioo. The list of prohibited topics stretched down as far as government ministers, members of the clergy, and the military.

17'0 nemtsakh', No. 12, 20 March 1914. '8 Russia proclaimed general mobilization on 3I July (New Style), as did Austria.

Germany mobilized and declared war on Russia on I August (New Style, which was IgJuly, Old Style). By 5 August (New Style) Britain, France and Russia were at war with Germany. Austria declared war on Russia on 5 August (New Style), and Britain and France declared war on Austria on I2 August John Keegan, The First World War, London, I998, pp. 74-77).



644 NOVYI SATIRIKON, 1914-19 I8

image showing all classes of Russian - worker, statesman, intellectual and peasant -forgetting their previous squabbles, all putting their hand to the same sword, and rallying to the defence of the motherland, depicted as a mighty female warrior-figure clad in chain-mail and bearing a shield. In the editorial, the journal confronted the particular problem of a role for a humorous and satirical periodical 'amid deaths and mourning [where] not just laughter, but even a faint smile, is an insult to the national grief, the national sorrow. [.. .] Laughter is out of place here that same laughter which in peace-time is so necessary, so universally welcome'. The editors had in fact considered halting publication for the duration of the war, but had decided instead to direct their skills and abilities into support for the fatherland in its hour of danger. Here they made appeal to history, which had shown thle effectiveness of the caricaturist's art, for example the role played bty Russian caricatures of Napoleon in I8I2. Readers were reminded that the journal had already, over the previous five years, caricatured Kaiser Wilhelm and German militarism, and now it promised to expose in full the true face of this 'rabid hatred for the Slavs'. In its conclusion the editorial formulated its wartime task more broadly:

We shall be glad if New Satirikon succeeds in capturing the images of our great and terrible times images of our enemies and friends; the heroism, suffering, horror, sadness, perfidy, beauty and loathsomeness of war. (p. 2)

The image on the front cover and the rhetoric of this editorial accorded with the mood of national unity that prevailed in these first few weeks of war.19 Its range of response goes beyond jingoisrm, however, to include prescience of what Wilfred Owen was, for the English-speaking world, later to express so memorably in the phrase 'the pity of war'.20 In Novyi Satirikon this was articulated pictorially. On the same page as the editorial there was a drawing, 'The Angel of Peace', depicting him not in his usual form of cherub, but as a slim, winged youth, naked, dejected and exhausted, tied to a stake and being shot at close range by a cannon. Thus from the very outset Noviyi Satirikon conveyed whatJahn calls a 'sober and compassionate' message.2'

The obvious target for satirical laughter was of course the leader of 'our enemies' -Kaiser Wilhelm II, already in the journal's sights andl popular, as Jahn points out, among all the Allied nations as 'a figure

19 This mood is summarized by Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution i8gi-I924, London, I996 (hereafter, Figes), pp. 25I-52.

? Wilfred Owen, 'Strange Meeting' ('It seemed that out of battle I escaped . . .'). 2'Jahn, p. 47.



LESLEY MILNE 645

of fun and infamy'.22 Jovyi Satirikon carried caricatures of the Kaiser, linking him with that other invader of Russia, Napoleon. Thus the Kaiser was shown, for example, rehearsing 'the pose of Napoleon on St Helena'.23 Another cartoon depicts his 'home life': his consort, wearing her crown, sits meekly at her knitting while he berates her for not bearing him a sufficient number of sons to install a Hohenzollern on thrones all over Europe.24 Wilhelm offered another advantage to the politically liberal Russian cartoonist, in that war-time patriotism could legitimize an implied element of anti-monarchism, although here the censor prevented too rude an attack.25 No holds were barred, however, when caricaturing German militarism, although stereotypical images of pointy-helmeted aggressors did not preclude sympathy for the individual soldier in enemy uniform. A poem 'Prisoners' ends by celebrating compassion as 'characteristic of the Russian consciousness', and 'The thought is born that "these - are not enemies!"'.26 Again, therefore, jingoism is held in check by awareness of common humanity.

When it came to Russian military prowess, Jfovyi Satirikon in autumn 1914 was confident but not bombastic. The initial military successes against Austria are reflected in a cartoon strip in No. 40 (2 October OS/i5 October NS), with six pictures across the top of two pages (6 and 7), representing the dialogue between an Austrian boy and a Russian boy. In each picture the Austrian boy makes a boast: 'We have heavy artillery'; 'We have wonderful Tyrolean marksmen'; 'Wilhelm has sent some German troops to help us' and so on. The Austrian boy becomes more and more distressed, as to each boast the Russian boy makes the same calmly smiling reply: 'But the Russian soldier has arrived at your door' ('A k vam russkii soldat prishel'). Finally the Austrian boy is reduced to silence and bursts into howls of tears. When 'the Russian soldier' himself is represented pictorially in the journal in the years 1914-mid I917, the drawing typically covers the full page, and the soldier is a large figure, dominating the frame; he is not, however, a legendary 'man of might' (bogayr); he is simply large, well-formed beneath his slightly baggy uniform, and massively reassuring.27 The German soldier was of course a formidable adversary, not as easily dismissed as his Austro-Hungarian ally, and here the journal made no boasts. Early Russian defeats by the German armies at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in late August and the first half of September

22 Ibid., pp. 48-49- 2j'ojl Satirikon, No. 37, ii September I9I4, back cover. 24 JVovyi Satirikon, No. 33, 14 August I9I4, back cover. 25Jahn, p. 89. 26 'Roditsia mysl', chto eti ne vragi! ...': Sergei Mikheev, 'Plennye', Nogyi Satirikon,

No. 37, ii September 1914, p. 3. 27 See, for example, the back page of No. 43, 23 October 1914.




(New Style) had, however, been followed by a quick recovery, and NoJfyi Satirikon responded by carrying a report from the London Times praising the miracles of Russian valour, to which the journal added the patriotic - but barbed comment: 'Although it is sometimes hard to be a Russian in peacetime, in days of war we are glad that we are Russians.'28

By the end of I914 Novyi Satirikon was braced for a long ordeal. The New Year issues had always performed a summarizing function, and the first number of 19I5 depicted on its front cover the infant New Year clasped in a mail-clad German fist, bursting through a page of news- print carrying war reportage. This was followed on pages 2 and 3 by a feuilleton entitled 'The Extraordinary Guest' ('Neobychainyi gost"), in which the old year I914 is greeted by illustrious predecessors among them the proud and somewhat patronizingly arrogant i8I2, and the ancient 330 BC, from the times of Alexander the Great. The new arrival tries to explain to them that warfare in I914 is different from their experience, both in terms of the numbers of soldiers involved in a battle and the destructive power of the weapons used. All I9I4's announce- ments about long-range cannon, shells that can kill one hundred men, bombing from aeroplanes are met with disbelief and laughter. The sketch ends with his giving up all attempt to explain, while the old men are very pleased with themselves because they have not allowed this whippersnapper to pull the wool over their eyes. 'The Extraordinary Guest', from the pen of one of Jfovyi Satirikon's frequent contributors, 0. L. D'Or,29 manages to raise a smile through its characterization of the years I8I2 and 330 BC as old men who think they know it all. When young I914 describes this war technological, mechanized - as different, he simply states the facts. He makes no reference to horrors or heroism, but readers can supply these reflections for themselves. D'Or's sketch is a fine example of Jovyi Satirikon contributors finding a patriotic but non-strident voice in which to deal with the subject of war.

The editorial at the outbreak of war had promised also images of 'our friends', and these were duly delivered, but with reference mainly to France. On the Western Front, of the battles that are engraved on British memory Loos, the Somme, Ypres there is no mention. The massive and prolonged carnage at Verdun in I9I6, however, inspired powerful pictorial representations. Beelzebub in hell, surveying all its instruments of torture, declares them out of date and instructs his

28'Volch'i iagody', Nogyi Satirikon, No. 37 (II September OS/24 September NS), 19I4, p. 8: 'Nastol'ko inogda tiazhelo byt' russkim v mirnoe vremia, nastol'ko v dni voiny my schastlivy, chto my -russkie.'

9 See note 13.



LESLEY MILNE 647 minions to go and take lessons from the Germans at Verdun.30 Wilhelm II, standing on a pile of corpses, expresses annoyance that the bodies are so soft, 'otherwise I could roll cannon up here and bomb them from above'.3' The heroically sacrificial French defence was a military success, saluted by Novyi Satirikon with a front cover on which Napoleon crowns the French garrison with laurels, while the sun emerges from behind his figure, above a caption reading: 'The laurels of Jena and Austerlitz have put forth new shoots.'32 The image of Napoleon, therefore, was negative or positive according to context: negative in I914 as invader of Russia, but positive in I9I6 as a symbol of the valour and military prowess of 'our friends', the French armies.

One aspect that Jfovyi Satirikon had not anticipated in its editorial of 31 July 1914 was a return to its role of social criticism, but the war soon offered new opportunities to attack old foes. When it came to the home front, the _y1, the journal was on familiar satirical ground; here it reverted to traditional targets, for example certain elements of upper- class society, portrayed as hypocritical and heartless. In the summer of 1914, just before the outbreak of war, there had been a front-page caricature that showed an official driving past an emaciated child and instructing his chauffeur to be careful not to run the child over because his bones might puncture the tyres.33 Now, when all sectors of society were supposed to be pulling together, and sharing wartime ri- vations, JNogyi Satirikon castigated high society for ruthless selfishness. A front cover in March I915 showed a party of marauders, identified as privileged by their dress and chauffeur-driven car, stealing firewood and commenting that they will have to take the diamonds out of the safe to make room for this new valuable.35 In autumn 1915 a society lady -again in her chauffeur-driven car -is exclaiming to her male companion that he is so clever: all the theatres are closed that day but he has had the brilliant idea of driving out to look at the refugees.36 At Easter I9I6 the same type of personage is shown 'slumming' it by bringing a poor family a bunch of flowers to decorate their Easter table: the flowers, she explains, are all white because the colour goes so well with black caviar and pink salmon.37 Later that year a high-society lady is depicted as turning away in disgust from a woman begging with

30No. I4, 31 March I9I6, back cover. No. 12, I7 March I9I6, front cover.

32 No. 23, 2 June I9I6, front cover. 3 'Liubov' k detiam', No. 30, 24Ju1y 19I4.

3 Stites notes that this was a theme common to many organs of the press: 'Days and Ni hts', p. 24.

No. ii, 12 March 1915. 36 'Svezhee zrelishche', No. 39, 24 September I915, p. 7.

No. I5, 8 April I9I6, p. I3.



648 NOVYI SATIRIKON, 1914-19I8

her child: how stupid these poor people are, is her comment; they should beg with pink, well-dressed, pretty babies, for no one wants to give anything to these dirty monsters.38 Of course these are grotesque exaggerations that is the convention of the caricature. They do, however, express an anger, which must have been all the greater for being displaced: the journal could not reach further up the echelons of high society, into the imperial court itself.

There are profits to be made from every war; profiteers and speculators therefore become a natural, and popular, satirical target. At a moment in I9I6 when the fortunes of war were favouring the Russians, ]N'ovyi Satirikon ran a front cover depicting the joy on the Stock Exchange: Russian troops are climbing the Carpathian mountains and share prices are climbing too.39 This was followed a few weeks later by another front cover showing the legendary Sten'ka Razin, seventeenth-century freebooter and rebel, hero of many a folk-song and tale, reduced to a naked, weeping wretch by the merchants of Nizhnii Novgorod, who have robbed him.40 Such topics are staple to patriotic caricaturists the world over in times of war.

JNsovyi Satirikon in peace-time was known for its jokes and genial humour, and its contributors managed to find a purely comic aspect in such war-time miseries as food and fuel shortages. In late I915 there was a back cover with four cartoons, on one of which a well-dressed gentleman, observing signs of pregnancy in his lady companion, asks what her husband will say, and is told not to worry:

'He'll never find out: by the time he comes back it will all be over.' 'Has he gone on a long business trip?!' 'No, I sent him out to buy sugar.'4'

The adulteration of products in short supply is comically illumined in the following exchange:

'How bad the electricity is nowadays ... The light is so pale and weak ...' 'It's obvious: they've started diluting it with water.'42

The journal also managed to find a joke in the accommodation crisis in Petrograd that was further exacerbated in the autumn with the start of the university term, when students flooded into the city. (Deferment of military service for reasons of education was maintained without encroachment until I9I6, and 'the universities of Russia continuedi at full blast'.)43 A front cover in October I9I6, takes its cue from a

38 No. 29, 14July I9I6, p. 9. 'Gniloi tyl', No. 30, 21 July I9I6.

4 No. 34, i8 August I9I6. 41 No. 48, 28 November 1915. 42 No. 48, 24 November I9I6, p. 6. " Norman Stone, The Eastern Front I9I4-19I7, London, 1975, p. 217.



LESLEY MILNE 649

suggestion (for which no source is given) that all the 'houses of assigna- tion' (doma svidanii) should be requisitioned for student accommodation, and the cartoon shows a mathematics student staring in embarrassment as a landlady shows him a room decked out with ribbons, frills and flounces. He asks how much the room costs:

Landlady: Ten roubles an hour. Student: Good God! That makes it 7,200 roubles a month?!! I knew the cost of living had gone up, but not by that much?!44

Such cartoons are strong on what could be termed the 'chuckle factor', and perform the patriotic duty of raising spirits. Laughter, which the editorial on the outbreak of war had envisaged as being out of place, turned out to be just as necessary in war as in peace-time, and to have many varied functions.

In its depiction of the home front Novyi Satirikon had also succeeded in introducing a critical and political element into its patriotism. At the beginning of the war there had been hopes 'that the tsar and government would grant more rights and greater scope for public involvement in what was quickly described as a "people's war"'.45 Paradoxically, 'mobilization for unprecedented carnage generated a powerful impetus for social reforms that seemed improbable in peace- time' 46 The national crisis thus offered opportunities for participatory citizenship as a form of patriotic energy. In this respect Moscow, not Petrograd, was the centre of the effective war effort, which was reflected in a Novyi Satirikon front-cover cartoon entitled 'Bureaucratic Petrograd'. Moscow, depicted as a heroic female figure clad in armour and bearing a shield, is shown bursting in at the door of a Petrograd official. The caption below reads:

Moscow: Petrograd, you know the fatherland is in danger! Mobilize your forces, join with me. We shall save ... Petrograd: All right, all right. Put it in writing and give it to my secretary tomorrow, between io and I2, and don't forget to put on the postage stamps.

The background here is the crucial contribution being made by the Zemstvo Union, the headquarters of which was in Moscow, and by the

No. 41, 6 October I9I6.

5 Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: ne Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I, Cambridge, MA and London, 2003, p. 22.

46 Scott J. Seregny, 'Zemstvos, Peasants and Citizenship: The Russian Adult Education Movement and World War I', Slavic Review, 59, 2000, 2, pp. 290-315 (p. 293).

".,Moskva -- Ty znaesh', Petrograd, otechestvo v opasnosti! Mobilizui svoi sily, prisoediniasia ko mne. My spasem ot ...

Petrograd-- Khorosho, khorosho. Izlozhite vse eto pis'menno i zavtra, ot io do 12, peredaite moemu sekretariu, da ne zabud'te marki nakleit' ('Kantseliarskii Petrograd', Aovyi Satirikon, No. 36, 3 September, 1915).



650 NOOVYI SATIRIKON, 1914-19I8

War Industries Committees, organized by Moscow's business leaders in July 1915. Significantly, these men were all liberal critics of the autocracy, and half the Ministers of the first Provisional Government in I9I7 were to come from their ranks.48 This was fovyi Satirikon's natural constituency: principled, patriotic, practical, propertied Russia. T'he natural forum for these people was the State Duma, but in August I914 the Duma had dissolved itself in a 'symbolic gesture of patriotic solidarity with the government'.49 In July 19I5 it was reconvened, an event that Novyi Satirikon greeted with enthusiasm in a front cover depicting the old adage that twigs can be broken separately, but not when they are bound together in a bunch in this case a bunch of rockets bran- dished against the enemy, who is shown taking to his heels in flight.50 However, the Duma was dissolved again by the tsar's decree in September I9I5, thus emphasizing that it functioned only on t:he autocrat's sufferance. Censorship was strict, muzzling the print-ed expression of opinion, but byJanuary 19I7 JNfoyi Satirikon was depicting the Duma, with thousands of hands reaching out to it in supplication - a cartoon that was cut by the censor.5' These images of the Durna

reflect and encapsulate the mood of liberal-intellectual patriotism described by Hubertus Jahn: the feeling that the tsar 'had becorne unpatriotic and the country's real interests were actually being served by an emergent civil society'.52

The opportunity for this emergent civil society to take centre stage came in February 1917, when food-shortage and inflation led to dein- onstrations among food queues in Petrograd, spreading and escalating into revolution that precipitated the collapse of the Romanov monar- chy. Pfogyi Satirikon was euphoric. Since No. 32 of I914 (7 August OS) the journal had carried a banner headline: 'War' (Voina). From No. ii

I9I7 (I7 March OS), this was replaced by the exultant banner 'Long Live the Republic!' ('Da zdravstvuet respublika!'). The front cover showed a crown atop of a head made of straw that was being blown away by the wind, and Nogyi Satirikon had a wonderful time as it released a triumphantly satirical barrage against those previously unreachable targets of tsar and court. The dominant note of the whole issue, however, was the long-cherished liberal democratic hope that at last 'a broad front of all classes might steer the nation towards victory'.53 This was expressed in a two-page spread, entitled 'To you

48 Figes, pp. 27I and 274.

41 Ibid., p. 272. " No. 27, 2 July 19I5- 51 Cartoons cut by the censor in January 1917 were printed in the first issue after the

February Revolution, Novyi Satirikon, No. II, 17 March I917, p. 12. 52Jahn, p. 8. 5' Figes, P. 30I.



LESLEY MILNE 65I

the glory' ('Slava vam') and depicting stalwart workers and soldiers, followed by a statesman carrying a model of the Duma, a student and a bespectacled middle-aged lady wearing a red-cross arm band (pp. 8-). The imagery here encapsulates the dream of civic patriotism based on an alliance between 'the people' and 'educated society'.54 Elsewhere in the issue, hope and dream had already been transformed into faith: a modernized 'Folk-tale' (Skazochka) concludes reassuringly: 'And now go to sleep, children. Don't be afraid. The people and the army are protecting you' (p. 4). On p. 13 a medallion depicted a winged figure in Grecian garb, bearing a red banner that proclaims 'Labour and Freedom' and raising a hand in benediction against a background of the Duma, a sunrise, and a silhouette of factories smoking busily below. For itself, Nogyi Satirikon celebrated the end of censorship: it printed the caricatures banned by the censor in previous issues, and showed a fat satyr energetically hammering a stake into the 'dust of Russian censorship, destroyed on 27 February in the bright fire of the Russian Revolution' (p. 2). The editor, Arkadii Averchenko, produced a mock 'reminiscence': 'My Conversation with Nicholas II', an imaginary dialogue containing all the advice he 'gave' (i.e. would have given) to the tsar. A poem 'Manifesto' by Valentin Gorianskii democratically and inclusively rejoiced, 'Long Live the Great Dynasty of the worker Ivan Ivanov', declaring that here was room not just for 'the worker' but for everyone: 'merchants, and widows, children and all ye who are learned men' (p. 5). Arkadii Bukhov in a feuilleton imag- ined Louis XVI marvelling at the technological progress since the French Revolution: no corpses on lamp-posts, no destruction of buildings (p. 5). Hailing the new freedom, an editorial called for support for the Provisional Government, and concluded 'Long live free Russia. Long Live the Constituent Assembly'. For colours in this issue Jfovyi Satirikon used only shades of red. Illustrations such as the two-page 'To you the glory' and the 'Labour and Freedom' medallion were obviously suitable for framing or display. Euphoria was complete, and confidence -in the revolution, the workers, the soldiers, 'the people'

was total. In the first weeks after the Revolution the journal vented popular

suspicions of treachery in high places, with several caricatures depicting the Emperor and Empress as German agents.55 There was also a strong anti-clerical streak, with priests and monks depicted as having joined

54 Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire 1552-I9I7, London, 1997, p 472. No. ii, 17 March I9I7, p. 5; No. 13, 2 April 1917, p. 6; No. 14, April I917 (second of three

issues in that month), p. 5. The issue dated 2 April 1917 is the last to bear the day of publication. From then on, only the month is given. In view of the importance of chronology, references to issues of the journal will henceforward indicate how many appeared in that month, and the chronological order within it of the issue cited.



652 NOVrI SATIRIKON, I9I4-I9I8

the forces of reaction.56 On the positive side, there was a lyrical welcome for the abolition of the death penalty: a poem, written from the perspective of death itself, rejoiced that death would no longer be turned into a hangman.57 With regard to the new rights and freedoms, the only one over which JVovyi Satirikon allowed itself to ironize was the introduction of the eight-hour working day in wartime an issue that was a source of tension and resentment.58 For the journal, support for the war effort was a constant value, the benchmark against which all events were measured, and it carried advertisements for the war loan, launched by the Provisional Government as the Liberty Loan ('zaem svobody').59 This loan was long-term -forty-nine years. As Norman Stone observes, 'In an inflationary situation few propertied Russians would be fool enough to subscribe to fixed-interest, long-dated government bonds'.60 Novyi Satirikon, however, batted not an eyelid at t-he lengthy term, using humour not to mock, but to sell the idea. Th-at subtle ironist, Nadezhda Teffi, produced a masterpiece of comic cajolery, urging everyone to buy 'as many bonds as you can carry home' in a poem addressed to:

Comrade capitalists! Speculators! Brokers! Merchants! Women! Ladies! Mothers-in-law! Schoolboys! Baritones! Proud fathers! Leninists! Dressmakers! Ballerinas! Strikers! Bourgeois! Peasants! [. . You have to be a downright idiot To let a moment like this slip: To be known suddenly as a great patriot, And what's more to receive interest.6'

This humorous appeal to base self-interest was addressed to a sophisti- cated audience well able to decode it as a call to altruistic support for the Provisional Government in the war effort. The bottom line was an unironic patriotism, as Teffi's poem made clear: 'You know you are saving Russia!' ('Znaete: vy spasaete Rossiiu!')

56 No. I3, 2 April 1917, p. 9; No. 14, April 1917 (second of three), p. 7. 57 No. 12, March (day not specified) 19I7, p. 2. 58No. I4, April 19I7 (third of three), p. i; No. i6, May I917 (first of three), p. Io. See

William G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Par4y, I917-192I, Princeton, NJ, 1974, pp. 99-IOO, 112, II8, 152.

No. i 6, May I917 (first of three), p. I3; No. 24July 1917 (first of four), p. 2. Stone, p. 290.

61 'Vozzvanie', No. 24, July 1917 (first of four), p. 3. ('Ei! Tovarishchi-kapitalisty! / Spekulianty! Maklery! Kuptsy! / Baby! Damy! Teshchi! Gimnazisty! / Baritony! Blagorodnye ottsy!/ Lenintsy! Portnikhi! Baleriny! / Zabastovshchiki! Burzhui! Muzhiki! / [.. .] Nuzhno byt' otmennym idiotom, / Chtoby upustit' takoi moment: / Vdrug proslyt' velikim patriotom / I vdobavok - poluchit' protsent!')



LESLEY MILNE 653

By the time that poem appeared (in July 19I7) the post-February euphoria had long since evaporated. Indeed the heading 'Long Live the Republic' had lasted for only five issues. By May 1917 another word had been inserted: 'Long Live the Democratic Republic' ('Da zdravstvuet demokraticheskaia respublika'). The immediate cause for the alarm was the arrival in Russia of Lenin, returning from exile in Switzerland, and given free passage across the German lines in a German train. Novyi Satirikon greeted the event under the heading 'Made in Germany' (in English in the original), with the subtitle 'The Latest German Inventions' ('Poslednie nemetskie izobreteniia'). The last and 'wittiest' ('samoe ostroumnoe') of these is a passenger train combined with a Bolshevik called Lenin who dreams of concluding a separate peace between Russia and Germany and of precipitating civil war inside Russia: the Germans shove the Bolshevik into a carriage, which they then seal and take to the border; here the seal is removed, Lenin climbs out and begins to act.62 At two further points in this issue of the journal, the sealed train is likened to the Trojan Horse.63 The word 'democratic' was inserted into the headline banner in the following number, and from this point on Lenin, Trotskii and the Bolsheviks became objects of concentrated satirical attack as supporters of Ger- many and saboteurs of the Russian war effort.64 (Note, therefore, the mischief of Teffi's inclusion of 'Leninists' among the addressees of her call to patriotism above.) Iconographically 'the Bolshevik' is portrayed as an ill-mannered lout, lounging on a sofa amid signs of destruction,65 or -in a powerfully nasty cartoon- copies of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda are depicted as huge insects crawling all over the trenches and attacking a disgusted soldier, who vainly tries to beat them off.66 When the death penalty was reintroduced in July 1917 for desertion at the Front, the journal accepted this with sadness: Death made her appearance on the front cover, apologizing for the fact that she has to take on this role, which should have been rendered redundant.67 In another cartoon the Death Penalty laid the blame on the Bolsheviks: it was they who made it necessary to bring her back to life -and now they have the gall to complain about this.68

The tone was not always so stern, however. Times were uncertain, but JNovyi Satirikon still managed to sustain its tradition of entertaining its readers, using laughter to help them diminish their anxieties. Among

62 No. I5, April 19I7 (third of three), p. 6. 63 Ibid., p. 9 and back cover. 64No. 26,July 19I7 (third of four), pp. 12 and I3. 65 No. 21, June 19I7 (third of five), front cover. 66 Ibid., p. 4. 67 No. 29, August I917 (second of four). 68 No. 3I, August I917 (fourth of four), back cover.




the things abolished in February 1917 had been the police force, replaced by a citizens' militia. This gave rise to cartoons depicting the new militiamen as striplings, dwarfed by their rifles and their tasks. 'A Reasonable Panic' shows the populace scattering in alarm as a young militiaman wonderingly inspects the safety catch on his rifle,69 while 'An Enigmatic Picture' shows a huge rampaging drunkard, onto whom two uniformed youngsters are clinging, the caption pointing out the pictorial puzzle: you cannot tell whether they are taking him to the police station, or whether it is he who has caught them and is now dragging them there.70 There is no sense of alarm in these cartoorns, which date from May and June 19I7, merely the humorist's delight in incongruities -although the cartoons did appear in a context of concern expressed elsewhere in the journal about 'anarchy' and the breakdown of law and order. Other pictorial and verbal sketches use the unexpected perspective to maintain the 'chuckle factor'. A report that in many towns all the cloth supplies had been used for political banners, and now these banners were having to be used to make clothes, produced a cartoon of two women discussing their new dresses: 'You're all right in your "Land and Freedom",' observes one to the other, 'but I had to sew mine from nothing but down withs.'7' Political activism along party lines is likewise treated as an opportunity for wit. A cartoon shows one man asking another: 'Are you a pianist?' and receiving the evasive reply: 'No, I'm a sympathizer.'72 Jokes such as these make the journal particularly interesting as a repository of the collective wit of the Russian liberal intelligentsia, facing cataclysm with appropriately intellectual sang-froid.

As the initial revolutionary flush gave way to fear of anarchy and a yearning among the propertied classes for 'a firm hand', the search for 'a Napoleon' who would magically restore order was elegantly mocked by Teffi in a dialogue between a socialite (now the 'delegate' of a 'society') and a Baron (who declares himself a member of the unemployed proletariat), whom she is trying to persuade into this Napoleonic role:

Baron: And what will be my duties? Anna Nikolaevna: You must be ... how shall I explain it ... you must be very tall, very majestic, you must appear and bark out orders. Then everyone will rally round at once and the food crisis will be solved.73

69 'Razumnaia panika', No. 17, May I9I7 (second of three), p. 7. 7 'Zagadochnaia kartinka', No. 20, June I9I7 (second of five), p. ii. 71 No. 31, August 1917 (third of four), p. 2: 'Tebe khorosho v "Zemle i vole" khodit' [ ...],

a mne odnimi doloiami prishlos obshivat'sia.' 72 'Nash vek partiinosti', No. 28, August 19I7 (first of four), P. 3. 73 'Napoleon', No. 24,July I917 (first of four), pp. 3-5.



LESLEY MILNE 655

Another of Teffi's bird-brained 'revolutionary ladies' identifies herself as belonging to 'the largest and most powerful party', the F. I.: the Frightened Intelligentsia ('Ispugannaia intelligentsiia' [1. 1.]).74 But the intelligentsia was indeed beginning to feel beleaguered, as expressed in a cartoon of quite different tone: 'The Well They Spat In', which had appeared in an earlier issue, had shown a group of workers, holding Pravda and standing amid ruins, lamenting the fact they will have to turn to 'these damn bourgeois: engineers, architects, scholars and other blood-suckers' in order to rebuild.75 Here the imagery of the sullied well conveys distress, bitterness and an incipient resentment against 'the workers' who have spat in the fountain of knowledge from which they will eventually have to drink. We have come a long way since the confident assumption that 'the Great Dynasty of the worker Ivan Ivanov' would have room for 'learned men'. 'The Well They Spat In', however, makes clear who is to blame: the Bolsheviks, as indicated by those copies of Pravda in the workers' hands. This cartoon has also resonance for later, when the Bolsheviks did indeed start trying to recruit 'bourgeois specialists' with the professional expertise necessary for reconstruction after the Civil War.

J'fovyi Satirikon remained true to its 'intellectual' credentials throughout, trying to maintain a distinction between 'anarchy' in the sense of lawless mayhem, and 'anarchism' in the sense of a political philosophy. A front cover in earlyJune I917 showed a huge red, skinny and malign figure of Anarchy running amuck through a tiny cityscape,76 but the previous issue had scoffed at scare-mongers who saw 'anarchy' every- where,77 and a late June number welcomed the arrival of the Anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, who declared himself against a 'separate peace'.78 In early July a front cover was depicting Kropotkin 'the grandfather of the Russian Revolution' and Ekaterina Breshko- Breshkovskaia, the veteran Socialist-Revolutionary and its 'grand- mother', standing in a garden with the Duma in the background and staring in dismay at a broken sapling, the work of their 'grandson', drawn as an ugly little twerp thumbing his nose at them and referred to by them as 'German-made' ('nemetskoi marki').79 The cartoon thus refers to the revolutionary legitimacy of continued support for both the Duma and the war effort, while emphasizing the complete isolation of the Bolshevik party on the issue of a 'separate peace'.

7 'Revoliutsionnaia dama', No. 25, July 1917 (second of four), pp. 2-3. 7 'Kolodets, v kotoryi pliunuli', No. 21, June 19I7 (third of four), p. 8. " No. I9, June 19I7 (first of five). 7 'Volch i iagody', No. i8, May I9I7 (third of three), p. 6. 78 No. 23, June 19I7 (fifth of five), p. 12. 9 No. 24, July 1917 (first of four).



656 NOVrI SATIRIKON, 1914-19i 8

The dream had been that the Revolution would unshackle Russia and release her energies for the war. This had been expressed in March in an emblematic silhouette: a soldier and a worker, who has cast off his chains, join hands against a sunrise, flanked by smoking factory chimneys.80 But the reality was desperately different. In a cartoon from aJune number, smoke coming from buildings now signifies not that a factory is working for the defence of the country, but that the people inside are smoking cigarettes as they talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.. 81

By late September a back cover, entitled 'Save the Revolution', was showing two men talking earnestly, with a bank of cloud at waist level, below which a German soldier is about to hack their legs off.82 In a series of ever more desperate feuilletons, Averchenko registered distress: the Provisional Government will not arrest the Bolsheviks until it is too late;83 do not try to 'save the revolution', save Russia instead;84 he is trying to knock sense into people's heads, but they are not listening, and by the time his feuilleton is published it may already be too late." Soon indeed it was. After the October Revolution and the Bolshevik take-over, in a parallel to his 'conversation with the Tsar' after the February Revolution, Averchenko created a 'conversation with Kerenskii'. Here he recalled the early hopes and the complete trust, and reproached Kerenskii with his failure to act decisively against the Bolsheviks from the start; there had been too many expansive gestures, too much rhetoric.86 This last aspect was mocked in a parody of Kerenskii's last vain appeal addressed 'To all! To all! To all!' ('Vsem! Vsem! Vsem!'). Novyi Satirikon suggested rewriting the whole speech using the same rhetorical device: 'Comrades, comrades, comrades, the Revolution, Revolution, Revolution, is, is, is, threatened, threatened, threatened .*..87 The absurd and flabby repetition pithily expresses the bitterness of disappointment.

The Bolsheviks, the only major party calling for an immediate end to the war, were now in power and the idea of a 'separate peace', which the journal had dismissed as so much foolish chatter in May,88 was therefore an imminent probability. JNovyi Satirikon responded with a new banner, replacing 'Long Live the Democratic Republic' with 'Tlhe

80 No. 12, March 19I7, p. 4. The issue bears only the month as date of publication, but appeared between No. II (I7 March), and No. I3 (2 April).

'No. 20, June 1917 (second of five), back cover. 82 'Zashchishchaite revoliutsiiu', No. 35, September 1917 (fourth of four), back cover. 83 'Krotkie gorodovye', No. 24,July 1917 (first of four), p. 9. 84 'Kogda mne zharko,' No. 31, August 19I7 (fourth of four), pp. io-ii. 85 'Doskoi po golove', No. 35, September I9I7 (fourth of four), p. 3. 86 'Ia razgovarivaiu s Kerenskim', No. 41, November 1917 (second of three), pp. 6-7. 87 'Vyrozhdenie gromkikh fraz', No. 40, November 1917 (first of three), p. io. 88 'Chetyre mira', No. i8, May I917 (third of three), p. 9.



LESLEY MILNE 657 Fatherland in Danger' ('Otechestvo v opasnosti').9 With regard to the problem of defining 'war aims', however, Novyi Satirikon was not blind to the logic of a view that described the war as 'imperialist' and unnec- essary. InJune it had run a cartoon-strip in which 'Satirikon' is shown asking the monarch why he began the war. The monarch replies that the bourgeoisie demanded new markets and colonies. The bourgeois says that markets and colonies are needed to keep the worker in work, and war is good for that purpose too. The worker says to ask the scientist who has re-tooled all the factories for war production. The scientist says he did this at the demand of the soldier. 'Satirikon' then goes to the soldier and asks him why he is waging war. The soldier says to ask the monarch.90 J\lovyi Satirikon never attempted to counter this bleakly circular argument, but now that there was no monarch, yet there was still a war, some reason had to be found for continuing it. In autumn I9I7 the journal identified this reason as the need to protect Russia's status in the post-war world. What Russia was fighting for was an honourable place at the peace conference table. This abstract idea was conveyed through a series of visually arresting cartoons depicting the negative alternatives: Russia not in the conference chamber but outside it, standing at the door as a poor relation, petitioning for alms;9' Russia not at the conference table but on it in a coffin;92 the once mighty Russian bear now so ill and weak that it would not notice if half of its body were to be cut off.93 But no matter how graphically these disaster scenarios were portrayed, they remained abstract, intellectual, deferred. Support for continuation of the war was 'sharply at variance with mass desires',94 and unable to compete with the immediate and simple promise of the Bolshevik slogan: 'Peace, Land and Bread.'

With regard to the army, Novyi Satirikon reacted to the evidence of disintegration and demoralization at the front by clinging on as long as possible to its faith in 'the army and the people', and choosing to portray them as seduced and debauched by Bolshevik propaganda. The Russian soldier depicted inJuly I917 was still a huge figure, part of 'the Great Army of the Russian Revolution', being attacked by the Bolsheviks as 'a criminal organization'.95 The journal managed to avoid strident jingoism, however. Although it mocked deserters,96 it

89 No 36, October 1917 (first of four). 90 'Pritcha o voine', No. 23,June I9I7 (fifth of five), p. 8. 91 No. 38, October I917 (third of four), front cover. 92 No. 42, November 1917 (third of three), back cover. 93 No. 38, October 1917 (third of four), p. 2. 94The formulation is Rosenberg's, p. 465. 95 No. 27, July I917 (fourth of four), front cover. 96 No. 30, August I917 (third of four), p. 7 and back cover; No. 31, August I917 (fourth of

four), p. ii; No. 32, September 1917 (first of four), p. 2.



658 NOVYI SATIRIKON, 19I4-I918

also directed its satire against what can be seen as its own position, that of the intellectual non-combatant, safely past fighting age: in one cartoon Mephistopheles is shown offering Faust the gifts of youth, strength and good cheer, to which he receives the reply, 'Are you mad, or what? And render me liable for conscription?'97 In such cases the ironic mode served the journal well as a means of depicting two sides of a problem. By early December I917, however, irony was giving way to despair, as shown by the frank naming of a 'Mourning issue' (Traurnyi nomer), with a cover showing Christ on the cross and Russia in flames.98 Later that month the front cover of the 'Christmas number' depicted the Virgin and child surrounded by 'the people', cavorting in a crazed and drunken frenzy.99 Here there is no image representing Bolshevism; this is 'the people' themselves as defilers. But the context is still one of blame. The back cover of the intervening number had, with heavy sarcasm 'thanked' the Bolsheviks 'for leading the good, kind Russian people out onto the broad highroad' ('za to, chto sumeli vyvesti dobryi russkii narod na shirokuiu dorogu'). The drawing here is of a huge figure, with a face that has potential for kindness but now has a mad glint in its eye, out on the rampage wielding a club.'00 This picture and text represent with eloquent simultaneity two traditional poles of opinion among the Russian intelligentsia, spanning the spectrum from a liberal-intellectual fear of 'the dark people' ('temnyi narod') to a populist faith in their intrinsic 'goodness'. Representations of 'the Rus- sian soldier' at this point display the same duality. The New Year issue of I9I8 carried a front cover showing him slumped in a drunken stupor, while beside him we see the looming shadow of a German officer, tlhe spikes of his helmet and upswept whiskers sharply silhouetted against the snow. In the background, however, another group of Russian soldiers is wheeling up a field gun, and above the picture is a dedication, addressing it 'not to the whole Russian army, but to its dregs' ('Ne vsei armii, a podonkam ee posviashchaetsia'). If some sections of 'the people and the army' had failed to live up to highest expectations, the message continued to be that this was all 'thanks to the Bolsheviks'.

With the Bolshevik seizure of power, the journal had entered the last phase of its existence. The challenge to laughter was now in a context of perceived catastrophe, and the dominant mode of expression was militantly sarcastic, as exemplified by an entire issue themed around 'thanks to the Bolsheviks', the back page of which was that rampaging peasant. On the front page a loutish Bolshevik is slouched on a chair,

No. 3I, August I917 (fourth of four), p. io. 98 No. 43, December 1917 (first of three). 99 No. 45 (Rozhdestvenskii), December 1917 (third of three).

100 No. 44, December 19I7 (second of three).



LESLEY MILNE 659

which is standing on a pedestal, while from below he is being hailed by a satyr proclaiming 'New Satirikon thanks the Bolsheviks for ... see illustration on p. 2'. Eight of the subsequent pages carried cartoons illustrating all the 'achievements' for which 'thanks' were due. One referred to Russia's status as pariah on the international scene: the Bolsheviks were 'thanked' for ensuring that any Russian would be 'greeted with open arms in Europe' - the 'open arms' depicted as barriers to entrance. Chief among the journal's concerns were of course the separate peace negotiations being conducted between Russia and Germany. In the words of a present-day Western historian: 'There was no reason why either the Allies or the Central Powers should listen to Russia's appeals for peace, especially not now that her military position had been weakened. She had lost her status among the Great Powers.'10' At Brest-Litovsk on i6 December (NS/ 3 December OS), the Russian delegation had been forced to accept a one-month separate armistice, and Novyi Satirikon in its New Year issue castigated this 'Obscene Peace' in a cartoon where the child I9I8 an ugly little changeling - is flanked by his parents: a fat German officer and the Spirit of Peace, now depicted as a half-naked, grinning prostitute.'02 By the time the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 19i8,103 it embodied all the journal's worst fears, proving them to have been sober rather than sensationalist in their predictions of Russia's loss of status. Again we can turn to the historian for confirmation of the extent of the disaster: 'As a European power, Russia, in economic and territorial terms, had been reduced to a status on a par with seventeenth-century Muscovy."04

Novyi Satirikon now produced a powerful series of 'themed' issues as a means of expressing reaction to disaster. A special number, Med in Dzhernani ('Made in Germany' transliterated into Russian), used savage, dehumanizing images to portray German contempt for Russia. The cover shows a Slav being stamped 'Made in Germany' and pro- nounced 'suitable for consumption'.105 The next issue of the journal was a special 'Historical' number, on the cover of which Peter the Great, surveying his 'window onto Europe', finds it blocked by a fat German backside. A contribution by Teffi bewailed the fact that Russians did not know the history of their country, did not remember the painstaking way that the Russian lands had been gathered over the centuries. Her sketch concluded with the image of a pin stuck in the

1' Figes, p. 537. 102 'Pokhabnyi mir', No. i,January I918 (first of two), p. 2. 103 The switch from the Old Style to the New Style calendar took effect at midnight on

3IJanuary: the next day was declared I4 February. Figes, p. 548.

105 No. 5, March I9I8 (second of three).



66o NOVYI SATIRIKON, 19I4-I9I8

map somewhere near Moscow, the map sent spinning round it, and pieces flying off in all directions: soon all that would be left was the pin.'06 In summer I9I8 the journal returned to a traditional summer 'Bathing'107 number which before the war had been used for 'seaside postcard' type humour, or so that the caricaturists could enjoy drawing shapely women in fashionable bathing costumes. Now, however, the 'Bathing' number was another opportunity to point out that the territorial losses of Brest-Litovsk had deprived Russia of her sea-coast. The cover showed the tall, strong, comely, naked figures of France and Britain, disporting themselves in the waves in company with a squat, ugly, gleeful Germany wearing a helmet and wet, therefore see-through, dress, while Russia haggard, wretched, ragged, stinking - watches them from behind a fence erected along the shore.

In the post-October issues of Novyi Satirikon, the 'chuckle-factor' is minimal, and the dominant tones are anger, fear and scorn. Anger finds vent through the sarcasm of 'special numbers' such as 'The Idyl- lic' (Idillicheskii), where each 'idyll' in the text is accompanied by an anti-idyllic image: for example, a German soldier saying to a Slav ploughman, 'You work, and I'll keep off the flies', the instrument used for this purpose being a whip.'08 There is fear that the intelligentsia will be thrown on the scrap-heap, in a topsy-turvy world where all the doctors, professors, actors and artists are domestic servants, and the illiterate are their masters.'09 There is fear of the street, where the well- dressed would find themselves stopped and robbed of the clothes they stood up in. A whole special issue, 'Le Nu' (French in original), was devoted to this new aspect of nudity -although here there were some residual opportunities for ironic sang-froid: instead of boasting that he is dressed by the best tailors, a man-about-town might now boast that he is undressed in the best streets of the capital."0 Scorn is expressed in intellectual fastidiousness and frankly snobbish elitism. A special number 'On Karl Marx' had a cover proclaiming: 'Karl Marx, born in Germany i8i8, buried in Russia I9I8', with an editorial comment on the following page that the issue was directed not against Marx but his contemporary followers and prophets. A cartoon showed 'A Rural Festival in Honour of Marx', with peasants dancing round a fertility figure labelled Karla Marxa. " ' The attempt to bring art to the masses was met with disdain, as on the front cover of No. 13, I9I8, which

106 'Retrospektivnyi vzgliad i udivienie', No. 6, March I9I8 (third of three), pp. I0-I I,3. 107 No. 17 (Kupal'nyi v kavychkakh), July I9I8 (third of three), front cover. 108 No. 3, February I9I8, p. 4 (the sole issue of that month: see note I03 above). 109 Teffi, 'Budushchii den", No. i, January I9I8 (first of two), pp. 6-7 and cartoon on

p. 8. 1 IQ'Sredi razdevaemykh: Zakonnaia gordost"', No. 4, March I9I8 (first of three), p. 5.

..' No. ii (O Karle Markse), May I9I8 (third of three).



LESLEY MILNE 66i

carried a quotation from Voltaire to the effect that culture should be left to people who understand it; the accompanying cartoon showed an ape combing its hair in front of a mirror. This is one of the very few moments when the journal's humour is offensive to present-day Western European sensibilities. In all other respects it maintained its liberal democratic credentials.

Later in I9I8, inJuly, the journal dedicated a special issue to 'Beau- tiful France' (Oprekrasnoi Frantsii). France, the war-time ally, had in I9I7 assumed a new importance as the embodiment of the revolutionary ideal. When the Revolution had been perceived as sullied by the mob, its new aspect had been fastidiously rejected in a cartoon where the Marseillaise, refusing to be sung by such mouths, flees back home to France. 1 12 Similarly, an account of robbery and looting had concluded that appropriate headgear for this revolution was no longer the French Phrygian cap, but a turned-out pocket."3 Now, in July I9I8, in the 'Beautiful France' number, France was used as the ideal against which to measure Russia and find her wanting. Each image was fraught with an unspoken question (what was Russia doing?) and therefore an implicit reproach (why is Russia not behaving in this way?). France was depicted as continuing to fight; proud of the native land and ready to defend its honour; showing a mother's care for every one of her warriors. The iconography here was that of a war-time pieta: the female figure representing France is wearing a nurse's headdress and the soldier's body is laid out across her knees, supported in her arms. 1 "4 From the image it is unclear whether the soldier is wounded or dead. Either way it is a powerful reminder of the need for care of the living and remembrance of the dead. Finally, France was still there, beautiful and immortal, reinforcing the perception that Russia had ceased to exist. This issue turned into a powerful collective lament, summed up in a poignant Averchenko feuilleton: of course Russia is long since gone, but he has only now woken up to this fact; like a mother burying her son, he has suddenly begun to wail; up till then she has been busy arranging a decent burial and funeral wake, but now comes a moment when the reality hits her and she starts to keen." 5 The image is very powerful in conveying the delayed onset of patriotic anguish at the moment when the hands fall and defeat is acknowledged.

The journal continued to oppose 'the Bolsheviks' with all the means at its power, however. So successful was it that it ran for only three more issues before it was closed down. The last issue, No. i8,

112 No. 30, August 1917 (third of four), p. 2. I 13 No. 43, December 1917 (first of three), p. 14.

No. I5,July I9I8 (first of three), p. 8. 115 'Slabaia golova', ibid., pp. II-12.



662 NOOVYI SATIRIKON, 19I 4-I9i 8

appeared in August" 6 and carried a cartoon, tucked away on p. I2, that showed a village greeting a detachment of Red Army soldiers who have come to requisition their grain. The happy villagers are carrying the traditional symbols of welcome: bread, salt and a religious icon. Below there is a message from the editors, declaring their loyalty to the authorities and announcing that they are not like the editors of Ogonek, who have been arrested for a 'tendentious' portrayal of scenes of violence perpetrated against peasants by grain-requisitioning detach- ments. The Nfovyi Satirikon editors, on the contrary, are 'showing what really happens'. This was Jfogyi Satirikon in its final apotheosis of full sarcastic mode, using crude overstatement to mean the exact opposite. Amid increasingly strict censorship and the closure of other organs of the press,' '7 the journal knew that it was taking calculated risks, and the back cover of this issue turned out to be its farewell. Entitled 'Thie Dreamers' (Mechtateli), it is an illustration accompanied by a poem. Thle drawing shows a rider on a winged, flower-bedecked horse. Hurtling down from dark clouds is a winged female figure. The horseman is leaning back to accept the force of her embrace, which threatens to unseat him, but he and his mount appear to be in harmony with thie dynamism of the swoop. The poem below the drawing concludes wit;h a verse that is a paraphrase of Pushkin's oft-quoted lines 'The lie that elevates us is dearer to me than a host of base truths': 18

Though truth may deal me a blow, Yet the wound will not be fatal. Beneath the armour of the created illusion I shall live in dreams of the bright day. 9

As the last words on the last page of what was to be the last number, this quatrain is a poignantly appropriate epigraph, for it encompasses and explains a wide range of subsequent responses by the Russian intelligentsia to the Bolshevik revolution.

The key lies in patriotism and the extent to which the 'created illusion' and the 'dream of the bright day' could be mapped onto the Bolshevik vision of a new Soviet Russia. This was made easier after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was automatically annulled by the German defeat in November I9I8, but in early autumn I9I8 Novyi Satirikon's contributors were scattering over Russia, by then engulfed in Civil War. At this point it was the White armies that were perceived as

116 Nos 15, i6 and 17 had appeared in July. There is no indication of when during the month of August No i8 appeared.

117oVJaia zhizn', edited by Maksim Gorkii, had been closed down in mid July. 118 'T'my nizkikh istin mne dorozhe / Nas vozvyshaiushchii obman': from the poem

'Geroi' ('Da, slava v prikhotiakh volfna . . .'). 1 9 'Pust' istina udar nanosit mne, /No znaiu ia, chto ne smertel'na rana, /Pod broneiu

tvorimogo obmana / Ia budu zhit' mechtoi o svetlom dne.'



LESLEY MILNE 663

representing the aspirations of the patriotic intelligentsia.'20 In 1920,

however, when Kiev was invaded by the Poles, the Bolsheviks discov- ered how to use Russian patriotism in the new Soviet regime's call 'to reunite all the Russian lands and defend Russia from colonial exploita- tion'. The Bolsheviks could now be perceived by Russian patriots as the most effective means of restoring a strong Russian state, and Russia's status as a world power.'2' The way was thus open for transfer of the 'dream of the bright day' to the victors of the Civil War, who were restoring the boundaries of the Russian Empire. Another potential source of patriotic pride had also entered the frame: a vision of Russia in the forefront of nations, showing humankind the way to a new and better world based on social and international solidarity.'22 Further, with the abandonment of War Communism and the inauguration of the New Economic Policy in 1921, the politics of the early 1920S in the Soviet Union seemed to indicate a review of ideology and a relaxation of dogma that facilitated hope in Russia as a place where stability and happiness could be possible.' 23

There were thus various leaps of faith to be made, and among those who made them was the co-founder of Satirikon and its first editor, the caricaturist Aleksei Radakov, to whose pen that drawing and poem 'The Dreamers' belong. Radakov put his talents at the service of the new regime and became acknowledged as a 'master of Soviet caricature', as did his Satirikon colleagues Aleksandr lunger and Vladimir Lebedev. Radakov and Lebedev, during the Second World War, produced patriotic caricatures, just as they had done in the First World War. lunger, however, was arrested in I94I on a false denunciation and died in Siberia in I948.124 D'Or made a career as a Soviet journalist, although always somewhat defensive about his pre-revolutionary political adherences. He died during the siege of Leningrad, in 1942.125 Arkadii Bukhov lived from I920 to I927 in Kaunas, in Lithuania, where he edited a pro-Soviet newspaper. He returned to Russia in 1927 and became a leading contributor to Krokodil, where it was said of him that

120 This was subsequently epitomized by Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Belaia gvardiia (The White Guard): partial journal publication, Moscow 1925; first full publication Paris 1929; first full Soviet publication, Moscow I966.

121 Figes, pp. 698-70I. 122 Hilde Hardeman, Coming to Terns with the Soviet Regime: The 'Changing Signpost' Movement

among Russian Emigres in the Early 920s, De Kalb, IL, I994, p. I53. 123 Catherine Andreyev and Ivan Savicky, Russia Abroad: Prague and the Russian Diaspora

19i8-I938, New Haven, CT and London, 2004 (hereafter, Andreyev and Savicky), p. xxii. '24 A. Radakov. A. lunger: Mastera sovetskoi karikatugy, Moscow, I989, pp. I-2; V. Lebedev: Mastera

sovetskoi karikatugy, Moscow, I990, pp. I-5. I am grateful to Evgeny Dobrenko for drawing my attention to these publications.

125 Russkie pisateli I800-I9I7. Biograficheskii slovar', Moscow, I989-, vol. 2 (1992), pp. I57-58.




he could assemble an entire issue single-handed, so versatile and professional was he and so prolific his imagination.'26 He was executed in the purges, on 7 October 1937.127 He and lunger thus paid the ultimate price for the patriotic transfer of their 'dream of the bright day' to Soviet Russia.

Those who never made this transfer created for themselves a different illusion: that of the overthrow of Bolshevik power. Arkadii Averchenko represents those Russians who found it impossible to come to terms with the idea that affairs had been so mismanaged that the Bolsheviks 'who had been the riff-raff of society and had been jailed and exiled for terrorism, bank robbery and many other illegal activities, had seized power and maintained it without the support of the majority of the population'.'28 Averchenko's writings in emigration remained locked either in bitterly sarcastic mode, or in elegiac nostalgia for the 'old Russia'; for him the only 'bright day' was October I905, that moment when everything was still possible, and he dreamt of a counter-factual reversal of history that would allow the Revolution to start all over again, this time avoiding all the mistakes that had led to the calamity of the Bolshevik take-over.'29 Averchenko died in Prague in I928, the year for which he had predicted 'the end of communism'.' 0 Valentin Gorianskii lived to taste the full bitterness of this particular dream. In Paris on the outbreak of the Second World War, he was seduced by the propaganda of the Nazi anti-Bolshevik crusade, which seemed to offer the fulfilment of this wish. Gorianskii's two sons, however, representing a new post-revolutionary generation of emigre youth, joined the French Resistance, and the elder son was arrested and executed by the occupying forces. Despite these connections wi-th the Resistance and the brevity of his own collaborationist activities, Gorianskii found himself ostracized by prominent members of the Paris emigre' community who had maintained an uncompromising anti- collaborationist stance.'3' Thus the emigre 'satirikontsy', like those in Russia, exemplify in their fates the tragedies of their epoch.

Special mention, however, must be made of Teffi, who in occupied Paris had no hesitation in identifying the Germans as 'enemies'.`32 Her pre-revolutionary writings had had such broad appeal that her appre- ciative readership had spanned the political spectrum from Nicholas

126 Leonid Lench, 'Arkadii Bukhov', in Arkadii Bukhov, Iumon'sticheskie rasskazy, Moscow, ?p.P p 4.

Russkie pisateli I800-I9I7; biograficheskii slovar', vol. I, pp. 380-81. 128 Andreyev and Savicky, p. xxii. '29Arkadii Averchenko, 'Fokus velikogo kino', in Dizuhina nozhei v spinu revoliutsii, first

published in Paris in I92I. Cited here from: Arkadii Averchenko, Sochineniia v dvukh tomak.l, Moscow, 2000, vol. I, pp. 63-65.

130 Spiridonova, Bessmertie smekha, p. I17. 131 Ibid., pp. 238-42, 280. 132 Ibid., pp. I55-56.



LESLEY MILNE 665 II to Lenin.'33 By the time of her death in 1952, she had become the grande dame of Russian emigre literature, and her relations with the Bolshevik regime had taken a most interesting turn. After the Second World War she received cordial greetings and invitations from Russia; indeed, just before her death she was surrounded by rumours (never confirmed) that she had taken Soviet citizenship.'34 During the First World War her brother, General N. A. Lokhvitskii, had commanded the Russian expeditionary force in France.'35 This tentative post-war rapprochement between Teffi and the Soviet, still Stalinist, regime, suggests a potential link between the First World War and the Second. Be that as it may, it can be read as symbolic of a natural patriotic swell of pride.

In the Second World War 'the Russian soldier' and 'the Russian people' vindicated in full the faith that had been reposed in them. Truly it was their finest hour. The Russian empire, now in the guise of the Soviet Union, reasserted itself as a world power, represented at all the peace conferences, re-shaping the map of Europe. The contrast with Brest-Litovsk was total. Although the First World War had never been commemorated, and Brest-Litovsk had never been recognized by the Soviet regime as humiliation, the treaty had caused much ago- nizing among even the innermost Bolshevik circles.'36 The First World War therefore represented 'unfinished business', under which victory in the Second World War now drew the line. A study of J%yi Satirikon I9I4-I8 enables us to track the evolution during the First World War of thinking Russian patriotism engaging in its decency and wit, absolute but understated, honourably principled and, finally, in extre- mity of anguish. As events unfold, the pages of the journal graphically presage the subsequent responses of the Russian liberal intelligentsia to the Revolution, while also helping us imaginatively and intuitively to understand the massive legitimizing impact for the Soviet regime of victory in the Second World War.

33 Ibid., p. I63. 134 Ibid.,p. I62. 135 Ibid., p. 122. 136 Figes, pp. 547-48.



"novyi satirikon," 1914-1918: the patriotic laughter of the russian liberal intelligentsia...

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