Lydia Chukovskaia’s Sofia Petrovna and Going Under

This chapter discusses the journey of Lydia Chukovskaia's manuscript abroad, its first publication and reception in tamizdat, and the political and aesthetic reasons for its rejection in gosizdat vis-à-vis its reception abroad. Situating Sofia Petrovna in the context of Chukovskaia's later novella, Going Under, the chapter addresses those aspects of both works that go beyond the author's incontestable historical accomplishment—daring “'to name the torture chamber' in its presence.” Because of the immediate proximity of Chukovskaia's fiction to the historical events described, Sofia Petrovna was read primarily “as history rather than fiction,” while Going Under was often read as an autobiography, rather than a creative amplification of the earlier work. The chapter argues, however, that the two works, set and written ten years apart, are “indexical” to each other. They may be read as a cycle or diptych without being reduced to the respective historical contexts that inform their subject matter: the Great Terror of the 1930s and Stalin's persecution of the Soviet intelligentsia and Jewry in the late 1940s.