RUSSIA’S REVOLUTIONARY SOURCES. PART I: HEROES AND VILLAINS. “Revolutionary Legends: Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo and the Soviet Memory Project”
By Luke Stanek
DK254.L26 F3 1937
Fadeev, Aleksandr. Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo. Moskva: Izd-vo detskoĭ lit-ry, 1937. Miami University Special Collections.
“They were stuffed into bags and cast into the furnace.”[1] With this legendary act, Sergei Lazo, hero of the Red Guard in Siberia, resistor of Kolchak, and martyr of the Russian Civil War, was etched into Soviet memory. His life story—and in particular this depiction of his death—transformed Lazo into a mythical figure whose story became known throughout the Soviet Union. In the young adult book Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo, which translates as The Death of Sergei Lazo, the martyrdom of Lazo serves as a prime example of what might be termed the Soviet memory project that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, has come under increasing academic and popular scrutiny. By examining this document, Lazo’s popularity in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet memory project itself, we can better understand how the Communist Party worked to create uniquely-Soviet histories and how Russians today continue to come to terms with the legacy of Soviet memory.
Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo was written by Aleksandr Fadeev, a preeminent Soviet novelist, and exists as one of his lesser-known works. It was published for children and young adults and recounts first the struggle of the Red Army at large in Siberia and the Far East during the Russian Civil War, and then details the events of Lazo’s life and ultimately his death. Fadeev uses flowery language to paint Lazo as a larger-than-life hero of the Red Army, who defeated Kolchak’s forces in a number of battles, despite being greatly outnumbered, and struggled to his last breath against the “wicked killers” of the Japanese Intervention.[2] The book includes photos and illustrations from the Civil War in the Far East, as well as illustrations of the events of Lazo that are narrated in the latter half of the work. Most significantly, the novel describes in detail the events of Lazo’s death, where he was captured by the Japanese, turned over to the White Army remnants under Kolchak, forced into a bag, then stuffed into the furnace of a steam train and burned alive.[3] It is precisely such a description of his death for which Lazo became a famous figure of the Red Army and the Soviet cause.
Sergei Lazo and his death are part of a larger historical trend, the Soviet memory project. This trend, which Thomas Sherlock terms “Soviet mythology,” encompasses the various efforts by the Communist Party and Soviet state to generate a history that not only supported the ideology of the party, but also reimagined the past for the purposes of creating a new Soviet world.[4] Old figures of historical importance in Russian history associated with the Imperial state or Orthodoxy were replaced by new figures associated with the revolutionary struggle in an effort to provide Russians with a truly “Soviet” heritage. These figures do not represent a complete break with earlier conceptions of Russia’s past, however, as Lazo is referred to in Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo as a “bogatyr”—a medieval demigod-like figure of strength and nobility—and thus Fadeev reimagines a traditional figure of Russian folk memory through a new Soviet lens in the life and death of Sergei Lazo.[5] Lazo stands among other figures of new legend, including the most famous, Vasily Chapaev, whose heroism was portrayed in print and on screen and whose name became synonymous with Revolutionary heroism.[6] In time, Lazo went from being a story of Soviet heroism and martyrdom to being the figure of Soviet statuary, namesake of streets, eponymous topic of plays and films, and even the namesake of a ship in the Soviet Far East Fleet.[7]
Curiously, however, Lazo was mentioned only once during his lifetime in the Soviet newspaper Pravda, and not for any battlefield heroics, but rather as one of a list of officers of the Railroad Red Guard elected honorary member of the Railroad Red Guard committee in 1918.[8] It was not until 1935, or 15 years after his death, that his name appeared in Pravda again, in an article explaining the events of his death, supposedly recovered in a previously-lost telegram.[9] After this first post-mortem mention, his name and story began to appear throughout Pravda and throughout Soviet daily life in poems, songs, and articles in the media, in literature like Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo, on stage in various plays, and even later on screen in the 1967 film Sergei Lazo.[10] It is in these developments of popular image that we see the Soviet memory project transform Lazo from ordinary officer of the Railroad Red Guard to symbolic figure of revolutionary struggle. While Lazo never became a pop cultural sensation to the same degree as Chapaev, the project surrounding Lazo shared numerous similarities in the way his life (and death) events were constructed as heroic deeds of great sacrifice. Significantly, just as Chapaev’s birthplace became a historical site of Soviet memory, the supposed steam engine in which Lazo fought his final legendary battle against the Whites and Interventionists was put on display north of Vladivostok by the Stalinist regime as a commemoration of Lazo’s martyrdom for the Communist cause, where it remains on display today.
However, with the Soviet Union dissolved, the histories of mythical figures like Sergei Lazo, memorialized throughout Soviet popular culture in works like Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo and the larger Soviet memory project, are now being openly-questioned by Russians and non-Russians alike in popular and alternative media. There is no dispute that Lazo was an officer of the Railroad Red Guard in the Far East and Vladivostok, but the details of his life and death, which are central to his legend, have been recently called into question. Blog posts by authors conducting independent research on Lazo have noted that the train engine on display in Vladivostok into which Lazo was supposedly stuffed is actually an American steam engine not introduced to Russia until 1940.[11] Additionally, a news report in Vladivostok has raised the same concern, and while not stating outright that the myth was fabricated, the reporter in the piece suggested at least the possibility that the death of Lazo has been exaggerated.[12] Perhaps most telling, Krokodil, formerly a state-sanctioned Soviet-era satire magazine, satirized Lazo in 2008 in “500 Russian Greats,” its final issue of publication. In the issue, Lazo is classified among Russia’s “Great Victims.” In the short synopsis of Lazo, entitled “Victim of [His Own] Convictions,” Lazo is described as a “fiery” revolutionary who was “burned by Japanese interventionists in an American steam engine,” leaning humorously on skepticism over both the myth and the ways in which it has been produced and put on display to the public.[13]
We see in these acts an opening up of Soviet-era history beyond merely the academic histories that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union to include public and collective historical memory as well. The literal archives of the past may have opened in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but so too did the archives of memory open up, previously sealed by the Soviet system of historical construction and remaking of Russian mythology. To understand the mythmaking process of the Soviet state is to better understand the process of perpetual revolution proposed by the Bolsheviks in the interwar period. The myth of Sergei Lazo, as represented in this particular work of young adult literature, serves as one of the many pieces of post-Soviet memory being brought back into question by non-Russians, Russians, and other post-Soviets alike. By examining further the ways in which the Soviet state constructed memory and the Russian past through sources such as Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo, historians and the larger public will better understand the ways in which the Soviet Union managed historical memory and further how Russians must reckon with historical memory once again.
Bibliography
Secondary Sources
Brandenberger, David. Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror
Under Stalin, 1927-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
“Deystvitel’no li Sergeya Lazo sozhgli v topke parovoza?” Youtube. Uploaded February 27,
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGvCb4cUR8I. Accessed December 6, 2016.
Mozzhechov, Mikhail. “Kto takoy Lazo i zachem Yapontsy sozhgli yego v topke parovoza….”
September 12, 2011. http://mishajp.livejournal.com/46659.html. Accessed December 6, 2016.
Sherlock, Thomas. Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: Destroying
the Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Primary Documents
Fadeev, Aleksandr. Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo. Moskva: Izd-vo detskoĭ lit-ry, 1937.
“Grazhdanskim voyna na Dal’nem Vostoke.” Pravda (Moskva), February 8, 1935.
“Iz Kiyeva Vyshli Parokhody.” Pravda (Moskva), March 24, 1939.
Mostovshchikov, Sergei, ed. “velikiye zhertvy.” Krokodil no. 6 (Moskva), 2008.
“Provintsíya. Sibir’ i Dal’níy Vostok. Po pryamomu provodu. Perevybory Sovdepa.” Pravda
(Moskva), April 24, 1918.
Zhdanov, Nik. “Theater: Plays About Sergei Lazo.” Current Digest of the Russian Press 5, no. 8
(Minneapolis), April 4, 1953.
For Further Research
Current Digest of the Russian Press issues are available online through East View at:
https://dlib.eastview.com/browse/publication/6765
Krokodil issues are available online through East View’s Krokodil Digital Archive at:
http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/udb/2230
Pravda issues are available online through East View’s Pravda Digital Archive at: https://dlib.eastview.com/browse/publication/9305
[1] Aleksandr Fadeev, Kak pogib Sergeĭ Lazo (Moskva: Izd-vo detskoĭ lit-ry, 1937), 30.
[2] Ibid., 28.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Thomas Sherlock, Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: Destroying the Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 146. In this paper, I use the term “Soviet Memory project” to describe this process, a term which I have adopted from Stephen Norris.
[5] Fadeev, Sergeĭ Lazo, 28.
[6] David Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror Under Stalin, 1927-1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 85-90. See also Brett Coleman’s paper for this project.
[7] “Iz Kiyeva Vyshli Parokhody,” Pravda (Moskva), March 24, 1939, 6.
[8] “Provintsíya. Sibir’ i Dal’níy Vostok. Po pryamomu provodu. Perevybory Sovdepa,” Pravda (Moskva), April 24, 1918, 4.
[9] “Grazhdanskim voyna na Dal’nem Vostoke,” Pravda (Moskva), February 8, 1935, 4.
[10] Nik. Zhdanov, “Theater: Plays About Sergei Lazo,” Current Digest of the Russian Press 5, no. 8 (Minneapolis), April 4, 1953, 35.
[11] Mikhail Mozzhechov, “Kto takoy Lazo i zachem Yapontsy sozhgli yego v topke parovoza….” (September 12, 2011), http://mishajp.livejournal.com/46659.html. Accessed Dec. 6, 2016.
[12] “Deystvitel’no li Sergeya Lazo sozhgli v topke parovoza?” (Youtube, uploaded Feb. 27, 2012), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGvCb4cUR8I. Accessed Dec. 6, 2016.
[13] Sergei Mostovshchikov, ed. “velikiye zhertvy,” Krokodil no. 6 (Moskva), 2008, 29.
Luke Stanek is a second-year MA student in History.