Authors

Una Vulevic¹;  ¹ University of Toronto, Canada

Discussion

Anatoly Rybakov’s Heavy Sand (1978) stands out for its focus on Jewish suffering during World War II, diverging from the Soviet emphasis on collective experiences. This paper examines how Rybakov navigated censorship to publish his novel in the USSR while also making a substantial contribution to the Jewish literary canon. Despite his intentions for his work to serve as a Holocaust education, Rybakov was accused of promoting Zionism, highlighting the precarious position of Soviet Jews following the establishment of Israel.

As a Ukrainian Jew whose parents assimilated into Russian culture, Rybakov embraced Heavy Sand as an opportunity to reconnect with his heritage. Due to restrictions on the word "Jew," he employed Aesopian language to preserve the cultural integrity of his work: particularly a loquacious, first-person narrator and archetypal characterization. The narrator, Boris, recounts his family’s history in their shtetl, blending personal memory with events like pogroms and the Pale of Settlement’s dissolution. Boris’ style reflects Jewish oral traditions, placing the novel within this legacy. While Boris views himself as more Russian than Jewish, this paper argues that reading him ironically—as a character shaped by censorship—reveals Rybakov's intended critique of the USSR's silencing of minority experiences. Rybakov also reconfigures Yiddish archetypes such as the badkhen, schlemiel, and luftmensch to fit the Soviet context. Through the trajectory of these 'types', he highlights the incompatibility of traditional Jewish values with Bolshevik doctrine. 

By writing about Ukrainian Jews, Rybakov challenged Soviet norms, offering a powerful response to the marginalization of Jews as threats to the regime. Briefly put, I intend to investigate Rybakov’s hybrid identity through close literary analysis, while also situating him within a wider network of writers who balanced between officialdom and dissidence.