The Lives of Alexei Marinat

The Life History between Biocracy and Biographical Illusion

Petru NEGURĂ, PhD., „Ion Creangă” UPSM

Summary

• Uses of the biographical method• Methodological doubts (P. Bourdieu)• Political power, objectification and subjection• Short discussion: V. Grossman, Life and

Destiny (excerpt)• Alexei Marinat: a case• Conclusion, discussion

Uses of the biographical method

• An individualistic understanding of larger processes

• A longitudinal, diachronical perspective on processes, institutions

• Socio-cultural approach

The Biographical Illusion

• The biographical method in social sciences: marked by the common-sense representations (the realistic literature)

• The biography as history: coherent, logically and chronologically structured and oriented

• The postulate of a (totalizing) meaning• The identity as constancy to oneself• Social / administrative mechanisms shaping individual

life experiences: the name, social identity, CV…• The “life history” without “social space”: an “artifact”

“Trying to understand a life as a unique and self-sufficient series of events (sufficient unto itself), and without ties as the association to a “subject” whose constancy is probably just that of a proper name, is nearly as absurd as trying to make sense out of a subway route without taking into account the network structure, that is the matrix of objective relations between the different stations”. (The Biographical Illusion)

The Bio-power: Objectifying and Subjectifying Practices

• The modern state as bio-power / pastoral power• The christian church leading the human “flock” to salvation

in the other world• The secular bio-power: governing the subjects (public

heath, police, education…) in this world• Knowledge-Power: objectifying and subjectifying Practices• Economy of visibility (Foucault) – Codification – Legibility

(J. C. Scott) – strategies of control and individualization• “Civilization process” – individuation through self-

discipline/ self control (N. Elias)

The Soviet Biocracy

• “Biocracy” (Pudal & Pennetier) or “Civilisation du rapport” (N. Werth): the autobiography – kharakteristika – a key document of bureaucratic and political control

• The heroic biographies (“récits édifiants”) – educational purpose: secular hagiography

• Stimulated testimonies (e.g. interrogatories by political police)• Critique and self-critique: “purification” of the collective and

of the self (B. Unfried, O. Kharkhordin)• The written autobiographies - “spontaneous” or

“encouraged”: education and (self)discipline (J. Hellbeck)• The Party’s ambiguous attitude towards diaries

Self identity and Imposture

• Ascribing collective identities / stigmas - “re-writing” the biography: self-discipline, accommodation, and imposture (Sh. Fitzpatrick, Kharkhordin)

• Creating a “documentary self” (Rom Harré, Personal Being, apud Fitzpatrick, 2005)

• Taking class identity seriously (but not for granted), since it was a serious thing in the Soviet society (Fitzpatrick, 2005).

The Soviet Subjectivity

• The “Soviet” Self as individual locus of a larger “Bolshevik” language (St. Kotkin)

• The autobiography as self-fashioning technique and internalization of the Soviet values and norms (J. Hellbeck, I. Halfin)

• The kollektiv, the individual and self-development in the Soviet culture (O. Kharkhordin)

V. Grossman, Life and Destiny (excerpt)

• Writing an institutional biography:• What is relevant?– For the state?– For Strum?– For the researcher?

The Lives of Alexei Marinat (other methodological models)

• Marianne Kamp, “Three Lives of Saodat: Communist, Uzbek, Survivor”, 2001

• M. Foucault et al., The Pierre Rivière case (1974): a “discursive battle” (I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century)

The Biography of Alexei Marinat • Pages from his diary (Dec.

1946 – 1947), published in 1988, 1991, 2004

• Memoirs (written after 1990), published in 1991, 2004

• Research interviews in Dec. 2003

• The MVD/NKVD/KGB file

The Diary

• Participation in the political life and (partial) identification with the official Soviet discourse

• Critical discourse: about the Moldovan writers, the repression , social inequalities, etc.

• The students’ daily life under the 1946-47 famine: survival strategies, informal practices, leisure practices, the typhus epidemics, etc.

• The relations with his Bessarabian colleagues: inferiority complexes

• A love story (embedded in social relations)

The Memoirs

• Recollections from the Gulag experience• The life in Chisinau after 1954 (the key word: I must):

reintegration, hierarchical mobility, group solidarities, learning “Moldovan” and re-becoming Moldovan…

• Striving to become a writer: overcoming cultural gaps and inferiority complexes

• 1956: marriage (with a former “repressed”) • The story of his family in the 1920-1930s: “kulaks”,

“counter-revolutionary”, “collaborationists”, etc.

The interviews

• Follows the narrative model of memoirs• Chronological order: family story, the WWII, the

Romanian administration, 1944 recruited in the Soviet Army, demobilization, university studies, Gulag, rehabilitation and reintegration

• The literary career within the Moldovan literary milieu• Useful details (e.g. a CC functionary, responsible for his

integration, rehabilitated “po-chistuiu” - „незаконно оссужденый”)

• Emphasizes his courage

The MVD/NKVD/KGB file

• About 850 pages• 1st file: 27 May 1947 – Sept. 1947 (354 p.)• 2nd file: April-May 1948• 3d file: July 1954• 4th file: May/June 1989– Order of arrest , search warrant, certificates,

biographical forms, interrogatories’ transcripts, testimonies’ transcripts, etc.

The interrogatories

• The concerned period: 1941-44• Marinat’s biographical version vs. MVD’s

biographical version• Marinat’s interest vs. MVD’s interest• Competing narratives: • MVD: Marinat as a “traitor” and “collaborator”• Marinat: working in the Romanian administration

– technical character; the anti-Romanian resistance activity

The testimonies

• Competing narratives• Abuses perpetrated by Marinat against local

population (esp. Communists) – version supported by MVD

• The involvement of Marinat in anti-Romanian clandestine activity

MVD’s accusation and arguments

• Marinat accused of collaboration with ennemi, maltreating locals (Komsomols and Communists ), stealing the Soviet public property (, jewish personal belongings)...

• “Proofs”: witnesses’ testimonies, family history (kulak), engagement in the Romanian administration, the diary…

April-May 1948

• Marinat denies his anti-Romanian resistance and recognizes his anti-Soviet activity

• As well as the main witnesses (Marinat’s involvement in anti-Romanian clandestine activity)

1954Petition and rehabilitation

May 1989

• 350 pages• The letter from Dolinskoe villagers against

Marinat (who presented him as victim of Stalinist terror)

• 17 testimonies, verification of all the archive documents

• Ambiguous conclusion

Instead of Conclusion

• Who really was Alexei Marinat?• The metaphor of the onion (G. Grass): what

remains from one’s biography after the researcher puts aside the “ascribed”, “constructed”, “internalized” identities, roles, statuses (through education, socialization, political / institutional processes, etc.)?

• Questioning our own codes and biographical trajectory before reconstructing a life history

• For a “polyphonic” life history