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language: Russian (English tr. John French)
country: Kyrgyzstan
year: 1980
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
dates read: 16.2.24-16.3.24
Chingiz Aitmatov’s The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years absolutely governs. it was both a Soviet bestseller when it was published in the 1980s and a critical success among Western academics (though, predictably, they seem to have largely (mis)read it as a “dissident” text, something Katerina Clark warns against in her foreword).
set at Boranly-Burannyi, a rural railway junction in the turn-of-the-’80s Kazakh SSR, the novel is primarily focalized through the elderly railway worker known as Burannyi Yedigei as he organizes the burial of one of his coworkers at the traditional cemetery of Ana-Beiit, a few hours away from the junction in the steppe. interspersed with the journey to Ana-Beiit are Yedigei’s memories of Kazangap and, more generally, how he (Yedigei) and his wife came to live at Boranly-Burannyi after leaving their home on the Aral Sea and what their life there has been life, focusing especially on the period from ca. 1952 to 1956 when one of their best friends was imprisoned for “subversive” writing, died during the investigation, and then was posthumously rehabilitated at Yedigei’s request.
interspersed with this is an account of the activities of a joint Soviet-US space exploration initiative, whose Soviet launches take place at the Sarozek cosmodrome, not far from Boranly-Burannyi. at the beginning of the novel, the two “parity-cosmonauts” (one Soviet, one American) operating the joint space station have vanished; when their replacements arrive to investigate, they learn that the missing cosmonauts have secretly made contact with an alien world and decided, on their own initiative, to accept the aliens’ invitation to visit. reports on the status of the investigation, high-level decision-making, and the missing cosmonauts’ messages from Lesnaya Grud’ are scattered throughout the novel.
the book is, on the one hand, a pensive exploration of “national identity” in a late Soviet context: Yedigei’s friend Abutalip was under investigation both as a possible English spy (because he spoke to an English officer once while fighting with the Yugoslav partisans after escaping a Nazi POW camp) and as a divisive ethnonationalist, because of his interest in recording “regressive” traditional Kazakh stories for his children’s benefit. when Yedigei and company arrive at the site of Ana-Beiit, they find it has been leveled to create an exclusion zone around the Sarozek cosmodrome. to this very limited extent I can see why someone might read the novel as “dissident”, insofar as it reflects a deep frustration with the implementation of the Soviet project and especially with the apparent arbitrariness of the state under Stalin.
what the novel is emphatically not, however, is a rejection of the Soviet project. this comes through in the sci-fi sections, as the Soviets and the Americans jointly decide to abandon their collaboration except to establish a defensive perimeter around the planet to prevent anyone from Lesnaya Grud’ approaching (the missing cosmonauts are forbidden to ever return to earth). the novel’s negativity is about the abandonment of the core principles of internationalism, cooperation, and cultural plurality — despite its “isolated”, rural setting and its emphasis on Kazakh culture (there is also a fantastic element inspired by, but not directly based on, Kazakh folklore) the novel is committed to an international, pluralistic outlook (we can see this just in its composition, with Aitmatov, who’s Kyrgyz, writing about Kazakhs) and to the Soviet dream. its frustration is with the gap between the dream and the reality.
the prose is also gorgeous, though there are occasional lapses in French’s translation. I loved this book. highly recommended.
moods: emotional, reflective, sad