Osip Mandelstam. Failed Metamorphosis Kremlin mountaineer to Jugashvili

Abstract

In the winter of 1937, during his exile in Voronezh, as a last desperate measure, Mandelstam tries to write an adulatory “ode” to Stalin. It seemed natural that the poet became interested in what would follow and whether he could “buy” freedom by the instrumentality of this implicit eulogy. As the research has shown, “Ode” collects and utilizes all the clichés that were used to portray Stalin as almighty and beloved leader. It is also possible to reconstruct some model by which the strategy of Stalin laudation planned. Soviets focused on primordial attachments of kinship and projected them as the dominant symbol for social allegiance. Soviet society’s leaders became “fathers” (with Stalin as the patriarch), the national heroes, model “sons”, the state, a “family” or “tribe”. It was Stalin who most often performed the ritual role of “father “or “teacher”. Together with the father’s care came his authority. They were ritual exchanges between “father” and “son”. The presence of such implications is highlighted in Mandelstam’s “Ode”.