“‘The
Germans have been defeated,’ said the gads.
‘We
have been defeated,’ said the smart gads.”
M. A. Bulgakov. White
Guard.
And so, once again Bulgakov shows us his optimism.
“After long epidemics, mass diseases from the corpses of “gads” [reptilians]
and humans… it took a long time still for the army to go around cleaning up the
ground, but the cleaning was done, and it was all over by the spring of 1929…
(All Russians know it of course that since
time immemorial bad people have been called “gads,” reptilians, and in his earlier great novel White Guard Bulgakov says in no uncertain terms that he is using
the word “gad” in accordance with
precisely that old Russian tradition.---
[In the aftermath of the German defeat in
the Great War/WWI] “Right then
an electric charge pierced the brains of the smartest of them… They understood
that fate had tied them to the defeated side, and their hearts were filled with
horror. ‘The Germans have been defeated,’
said the gads. ‘We have been defeated,’
said the smart gads.”)
…In the already mentioned earlier novel Food of the Gods, by H. G. Wells, there
is no happy ending, not to mention the fact that unlike in Bulgakov’s Fateful Eggs, where growth experiments
are conducted on lower animals, such experiments in Wells’ novel are conducted
on humans.
Nature, in Wells’ fantastic creation, takes her
revenge on the human race: the sun disappears, and with it ends life on Earth.
In his novella Fateful
Eggs, Bulgakov uses an allegory to expose the ugliness of the NEP (New
Economic Policy, introduced by Lenin in 1921), which replaced a no less
terrible, but in a different way, policy of War Communism. NEP was eventually
abolished by Stalin in 1928, with the introduction of the First Soviet
Five-Year Plan. Having written Diaboliada
in 1923, Bulgakov followed it in 1924 with Fateful Eggs, where he predicted the end of NEP four years in
advance. (The novella’s action takes place mostly in the summer of 1928.) His
depiction of the grotesque “reproduction” and the ferocious struggle for a
place under the ‘red beam,’ the fact that “the newly-borns
fiercely attacked each other, tore each other into pieces, and devoured them,” can
only be explained as an allegory of competition in capitalist society, bent
exclusively on self-profit.
Bulgakov introduces two leading characters in his
novella: Professor Persikov and Commissar Rokk.
Bulgakov clearly shows that the idea belongs to
Persikov (within the broader allegory the professor appears more as a political
economist than as a zoologist; we are obviously dealing here with two parallel
realities, one literal [Bulgakov depicts Professor Persikov here as a brilliant
bona fide zoologist], and the other allegorical, dealing with NEP, where
Professor Persikov comes out as a political economist), who naturally wants to
develop it on his own, together with his scientific associates, and in a
professionally controlled setting.
The Government becomes interested in Professor
Persikov’s research, but assigns its implementation to a certain A. S. Rokk (
more about it later), because he guarantees results within a very short period
of time, one month, to be precise. Despite Persikov’s stiff and indignant
resistance, he is bound to lose.
(He personally telephones the Kremlin, in an extreme
state of irritation. “Excuse me… I cannot understand… How can it be? I… without my consent
and advice… But he will cook up hell knows what! … If it comes to that, I
categorically protest. I am not giving my sanction!”)
Later he complains to his assistant Privatdozent
Ivanov:
“‘And
what forwardness, what pushiness. And, mind you, I am assigned to instruct this
scalawag. And how am I supposed to
instruct this ignoramus when I myself cannot say anything on this subject.’
‘But
couldn’t you refuse?’--- asked
Ivanov.Persikov went red in the face, took up a piece of paper, and showed it to Ivanov. The other read it and smirked ironically. ‘Y-yes,’ he said meaningfully.”
There are two storylines in Fateful Eggs, and at first sight both seem to be about foreign
intervention, the first one by the Powers of the Entente (England, France, the
United States, plus Japan), following Russia’s separate peace treaty with
Germany in 1918, and the second one codenamed Anaconda, once again coming from the West, in the form of a
biological weapons attack.
But by the same token as the “chicken plague”
allegorized the intervention of the Entente, the biological intervention
allegorized the New Economic Policy. Under these premises, our “zoologist-eccentric”
Persikov plays the role of a political economist, whose idea of NEP was
supposed to be implemented under his supervision and in a tightly controlled
environment, in other words, NEP as an experiment. Knowing the course of
Bulgakov’s thought, this should not come as too much of a surprise. In White Guard, he calls “gads” persons who collaborate with
foreigners (in this case, with the German occupiers). In his 1934 play Bliss, the thief Miloslavsky answers the
question: “And who are you?” by
saying: “And what is it to you? Say, I am
a soloist of State theaters…” (Being a professional pickpocket, his
favorite locations for conducting his business of stealing are theaters,
attended by big numbers of rich people, spelling out crowds, hustle, and such,
in other words a sea of opportunity for a thief.) As for Commissar Rokk,
Bulgakov gives him a rather strange biography: he is a flutist. (More on this
will be said later on.)
In Fateful Eggs,
Professor Persikov says that he is not a specialist on the feathered race,
although just a while ago, in “chicken plague,” Bulgakov depicts as “feathered”
Emperor Nicholas II and Grand Duke Mikhail.
Giving a scientific characteristic to roosters
to the reporter Bronsky, Professor Persikov for some reason names only
“foreigners” from India, the Malayan Archipelago, the Himalayas, Burma, the
island of Java, Ceylon. (“He was a first-class
scientist in the area of the amphibians and hairless reptilians.”) Even
the professor’s research institute is located on Herzen Street, named after a
man who spent all his adult life living abroad.
And then, what kind of Institute can that be which has
only two researchers: Professor Persikov and Privatdozent Ivanov? This looks
more like an experimental team, where they would also like to include one
student. Everything in Bulgakov is “not what it ought to be and not the right
way, guys!” Any which way you go, there is a ruse.
Writing about “experts on the feathered race,”
Bulgakov may have in mind specialists on domestic policy, whereas “experts on
the amphibians and reptiles” may well be specialists on foreign policy.
Only a man familiar with the economies of foreign
countries could suggest NEP as a replacement for “war communism.”
A note on political economy. How can a zoologist be a
political economist? I answer with this question: What does Marxism have to do
with zoology? For an explanation I am quoting none other than Bulgakov himself.---
“What,
you do not know the difference between naked gads and reptilians?” asked
Persikov. “But this is just laughable,
young man. Naked gads have no pelvic kidneys. They are absent. That’s what,
sir. Shame on you. You are probably a Marxist?”
“A
Marxist,” replied the failed student, fizzling out.
It may be noted for clarity that all early Marxists,
epitomized by Plekhanov in Russia, were political economists… “That’s what, sir.”
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