Fedor Glatkov: Zement

04.11.2024 - 04.11.2024

We started this year's book club with a discussion of Fedor Gladkov's Cement (orig. 1925). Unlike in secondary literature, the discussion did not start with the gender issue, but with our main theme - "work and work collectives". This meant that not only the historical circumstances outlined in the novel (October Revolution, Civil War, NEP) but also the establishment of a new production paradigm and the development of a new society were examined in more detail. Only in the last third (estimated) did we switch to the Soviet New Woman - to Daša as mother, wife and Ženotdel activist. The discussion was marked by comments about the mostly unexpected confrontation of this novel with the dogmas of revolution and post-revolutionary construction. Rather than presenting them as models (as later editions of Cement do), the original version offers an astonishing revelation of the problems of this new society: new production models (New Economic Policy - NEP), working conditions, work ethic, proletarian revolution, gender roles, the function of intellectuals and especially of the technical intelligentsia in the new socialist structure, bureaucracy and careerism, purges, child-rearing and, last but not least, the role of the individual in the 'mass' of new people. Other points raised in the discussion were: marital relations, feeling vs. reason, man vs. animal, time conflict between past and future, etc.