Sofia Petrovna

The titular protagonist of Chukovskaya’s novella embodies the ideal of the new Soviet woman, an archetype of a better, more productive woman propagandized by the Communist Party. Sofia upholds the expectation that woman be not only devoted mothers but industrious members of the workforce. Following her husband’s death, Sofia doesn’t languish: She learns typing and joins a patriotic enterprise, the publication of fiction that extolls the Soviet Union. Her productivity and ambition (shown by her frequent promotions at work) and her devotion to Stalinism (shown when she lovingly hangs a portrait of Stalin for the office party) characterize Sofia as a hardworking and conformist patriot. By casting Sofia in this archetype of the new Soviet woman, Chukovskaya exposes the hypocrisy of Stalinist propaganda: A paragon of Soviet excellence, Sofia nonetheless suffers the persecution of the USSR.

Initially, Sofia is almost comically ignorant of the crimes of the state: Given that she lived through the famines of the early 1930s and the first wave of purges following Sergei Kirov’s murder, her total faith in Stalin strains credulity. By exaggerating Sofia’s faith to hyperbolic proportions, Chukovskaya emphasizes the outsize power the state had in controlling thought—as Chukovskaya writes in the afterword, Sofia is “a personification of those who seriously believed that what took place was rational and just” (112). Sofia’s naivete is both endearing and alarming. For example, defending Natasha is both an admirable act of loyalty and integrity and a reckless act of self-sabotage: Sofia instinctively defends her friend against the lies about her, not realizing that doing so is not only futile but dangerous. In such instances Chukovskaya plays with the boundary between naivete and foolishness.

Sofia’s character arc from vital and resilient to listless and alone illustrates the individual toll of the Great Terror. Chukovskaya tracks Sofia’s decline through her dress, hygiene, and speech. Before Kolya’s arrest Sofia prides herself on maintaining an elegant appearance. She’s shocked by how much Dr. Kiparisov’s arrest has aged Mrs. Kiparisova:

Her face is so dark and wrinkled. No, it’s not possible, I’m not like that yet. She’s simply let herself go terribly: the felt boots, the cane, the scarf…It’s very important for a woman not to let herself go, to take care of herself. Who on earth wears felt boots these days? (37)

By the end of the story Sofia’s ordeal wears her down to the wrinkled, felt-boot-wearing woman that populates the lines for the prisons and prosecutors’ office. Fear, isolation, and the torturous lack of information about Kolya sap the life from Sofia. The Sofia Petrovna of the first chapter would do anything to help her son; the Sofia Petrovna of the final chapter concedes the terrible fact that she is powerless to help him.

Patriotic, disciplined, and selfless, Kolya is the ideal son and Soviet citizen. Though he perfectly embodies the ideology of the Communist Party, he nonetheless suffers the terror of the Great Purge firsthand. The message of his imprisonment is clear: No amount of patriotism is enough to spare you persecution.

Kolya fits the archetype of the new Soviet man—the ideal image of a citizen promoted under Communist ideology in the Soviet Union. He masters his base, unproductive instincts, prioritizing the common good over personal pleasure: As Sofia notes, he avoids smoking and drinking in favor of hard work. Kolya shows that he is a selfless patriot in his studies and in his work at the factory in Sverdlovsk, where his invention of a cogwheel furthers the Soviet goal of becoming less dependent on foreign (capitalist) manufacturing. Kolya embraces the spirit of transcendence through self-sacrifice expressed in the epic poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by his hero, the esteemed Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky: “A Party’s / a million-fingered hand clenched / into one fist / of shattering might. / What’s an individual? / No earthly good” (Mayakovsky, Vladimir. “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.” Poems. Translated by Dorian Rottenberg, Progress Publishers, 1972). Kolya forsakes individuality for the higher purpose of building the Soviet project. However, as Mayakovsky’s poem implies, a society in which the individual is maligned as a worthless zero is one ripe for oppression. Kolya’s blind patriotism doesn’t save him from the violence of Stalin’s dictatorship.

One of the junior typists at the publishing house where Sofia works, Natasha is a modest, pallid 24-year-old. Natasha’s father, a colonel in the White Army, died when she was five, in 1917. After the Revolution, Natasha and her mother were evicted from their house, starting a period of hardship for them. Natasha’s misfortune makes her a largely tragic character.

In a novella where appearance is often indicative of character, Natasha’s wan complexion signifies her difficult life. Despite having survived her impoverished childhood, Natasha finds that her family history still plagues her: Notwithstanding her Soviet sympathies, she’s continually denied Komsomol membership because her father fought the Bolsheviks. Her difficulties extend to her love life as well—her unrequited love for Kolya, who is callous to her problems with the Komsomol, is a major source of distress. Natasha’s suicide and unattended funeral (Sofia buries her alone) provide a stark example of the isolation and suffering wrought by not knowing why a loved one has been arrested, where they are, and if they’ll return. Chukovskaya uses Natasha’s character to show that the Great Terror was a campaign of both physical and psychological torture.