Dual citizenship: Russian and American cultural contexts in The Dream Life of Sukhanov.

摘要

This thesis examines Olga Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov as a work of both Russian and American literature by using the theories of cultural studies and comparative literature. The Russian thematic elements are established by a comparison between Dream Life and Dostoevsky's The Double, Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading, and Gogol's "Diary of a Madman." Dream Life's Russian cultural and historical aspects are elucidated through an examination of the tradition of iconography and Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev. The novel's American qualities are introduced via a comparison between Dream Life and Lewis's Babbitt, Ferber's So Big, and Cather's "The Sculptor's Funeral." To establish Sukhanov as a victim an overview of Soviet history is employed, including the Stalinist purges, socialist realism, Khrushchev's "thaw," and Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost. This thesis concludes that becoming an apparatchik was the only choice available to Sukhanov in order to survive the Soviet system.