For this essay I wished to extend my last piece´s thoughts by exploring ‘Omon Ra,’ which was written in 1992 and thus explores faith and divinity as manufactured unrealities differently to Mann, who wrote against the backdrop of what was soon to become WWII. Where I argued Mann examines decadence and power as new forms of divinity, Victor Pelevin utilizes faith and ideas of the sublime as tools to reconceptualize oppression under the pretense of liberation and simulated purpose. The hyperbolic expectations of likeness to unrealistic and subjugating images showcase not just the absurd posthumanist search for ‘Real Men,’ (31) but emphasize the unrealizable mechanized “self” expected of them. Pelevin’s exploration of divinal production and secular nationalism (Ruan) exemplify his conceptions of divinity and faith within Soviet society, through which he criticises the systems established by the Party – namely regarding space travel – to manipulate its members. My aim for this essay is to examine how, through the novel’s critical approach, the author exemplifies the hidden mechanisms behind the myths and tales of national idealism, investigating and revealing how these exploit its participants in the pursuit of an ideal cultural identity of pseudo-divine and faith-related dimensions.
The secularity of the Soviet Union would have never permitted the conception of religious faith or divinity within its realm. Nevertheless, the absence of such would have produced the necessity for a surrogate; the construction of secular, nationalist faith and divinity fulfills that role. One mode in which this is carried out within the novel is by displacing that faith onto an acceptable object; faith in a set of principles that encourage a sense of national identity endorsed by a representation, which in Omon Ra are modeled after Polevoy’s The Story of a Real Man / Human Being. The author satirizes the use of this sacred Soviet text by hyperbolizing the manufacture of an ideological ideal. Members of the Soviet school are told to ‘remember the story of the legendary hero Alexei Maresiev’ (31) and to act according to his image, whereby the academy’s systematic amputation of feet is justified. By upholding the seductive myth of the ‘Real Man’ (32), the body’s castration becomes a prerequisite to the embodiment of Polevoy’s epic, sacrificial hero, and pride is encouraged to be taken ‘in the possibility of [it]’ (Kaganovsky 2). Suffering is justified through the simulated feelings of purpose and nationhood reflected in ‘[t]hose final seconds of the countdown … the voice of history speaking through millions of television screens’ (104). It is the infinite and unending faith in the state which seemingly allows for the ‘journeying towards the moment when I would soar up over the crowds’ (112), a replacement of the religiosity-based faith, that allows for the consolidation of suffering, martyrdom, and heroism in an idealized self.
Pelevin presents a case of secular theosis through which the State makes its participants unconscious accomplices of their own oppression, demanding of them to perform in the likeness of the wounded aviator no matter how absurd or, like ‘the white spots of the distant and unattainable stars’ (111), impossible to seize: the ‘boys’ (30) – youthful and impressionable to the fabrications of the academy – are urged to re-envision themselves as ‘cadets’ as that ‘would be more correct now’ (30). The academy becomes a graveyard of wounds that reflect the cultural identity inspired in the students. ‘The lids of one eye […] completely fused together’ (40) and the space ‘where Slava’s legs should have been’ (33) signify the bodies’ loyalty and devotion to the Party, as well as their attempted correspondence to the ideal established. An illusion of a sense of collectivism is constructed in the assumption of parallel or shared efforts to embody a national ideal; suffering demonstrates the sacrifice required to be in the image of this ideological model, and illustrates Soviet citizens’ faith in the state to bestow upon them purpose. Nevertheless, like the stars, the model ‘Real Man’ fashioned after Maryesev is ‘blurred by the lenses’ (111), impossible to inspect clearly and with a skewed vision of what is being observed. Men are accepted into the academy only after being physically marked as property, bound disability and thus completely obedient to the Party. The figure of Maresyev is exploited for the sake of producing an aesthetic mantle that shapes the abstract idea of freedom and honor; an elaboration of the object that arouses satisfaction, interest, and inspiration. The decision that ‘had ripened in [Omon’s] soul’ (25) to enroll in military college is paired with his desired identification with the figure who represents the personal ideal of space travel he has faith in: ‘we could see our future selves in the close-cropped young men […] somehow the colour made you trust the picture more’ (25). Ironically, ‘the other photographs of aviation trainers that looked like the half-decayed corpses of aeroplanes teeming with tiny people’ (25) that deterred him from choosing another school is exactly what he encounters in the college he chooses.
Omon’s ‘imaginary adventures’ happen only with ‘closed […] eyes and turned to face the wall’ (69) in the privacy of the space between himself and concrete. The image bears a resemblance to that of a child who has been sent to a corner as punishment, only he is left to wander off free from the academy’s standards regarding how to achieve such a dream. Omon is forced to reconcile with the fact his desire to be free, which can only be achieved through space, must serve society: ‘the news that my heroism would remain unknown was no blow to me. The blow was the news that I would have to be a hero’ (39). The state’s manufactured cosmic myth seduces young men’s ‘[aspirations] beyond the thin blue film of the sky into the black abyss of space’ (8) to contributing pieces to the performance of a cultural identity that reflects progress and influence over that beyond earth; the students’ exploitation is concealed under the pretense of duty to the nation and realized purpose. By utilizing individuals to uphold the nation’s power, the academy legitimizes the Soviet Union’s dominance over the cosmos before the whole world. It means to expand the magnitude of the object of faith to outer space and to authenticate the god-like quality of its figurehead, upon whose standards of identity divinity is attained.
The objects of faith and divinity fabricated by Soviet society are, as Gomel notes, ‘an ideological falsification’ (52). The truth is revealed to Omon slowly, by the painful discrepancy between the ‘stinking little closets’ and the ‘multicolored arrays of lights that made me catch my breath in the evenings…’ (23), and in the freedom to ‘aspire beyond the thin blue film of the sky’ against the reality of space travel, where he is trapped inside a rocketship in even more confining conditions ‘than the stifling [ones] on Earth he had been striving to escape’ (Khagi). The price for ‘that peace and freedom […] unattainable on earth’ (9) is the individual’s dissolution into a collective, as well as his total submission to the regime; only the reward of space never comes, instead imprisoning Omon – and many more before and after agreeing to subscribe to a collective purpose or identity – in a monotonic life of ‘garbage dump’ (22) closets and ‘drinking cheap port’ from ‘dirty glass[es]’ (23), whilst denying him of autonomy and identity outside the collective he now comprises as a cosmonaut. The ‘cyborg problematic’ of the ‘creation of a new type of human being’ (Gomel 52) is not regarded seriously by Pelevin, in the sense that the author does not believe such traps are successful in simulating and fulfilling those who choose to partake in them. Rather, the author’s intent is to present these Soviet-era concepts of divinity and faith as ideological traps, of which Omon falls for many.
Any form of freedom in their identity as cosmonauts or Soviets is met with punishment, which must be accepted in order to reflect the submission and self-subjugation the ideal mandates: the technology of the mask, as R. Whealen suggests, compels Omon and Mitiok ‘to give the appearance of actually enjoying his humiliation’ as ‘[t]he gas mask gently squeezes your face, pressing on your cheeks and forcing your lips to stretch into a kind of kiss, apparently addressed to everything around you’ (17). The aesthetic of the gas mask evokes the nostalgic aesthetic of soldiers; gratitude is expected because, to be granted the chance to ‘crawl’ (17) in the mask of a symbolic hero means to be given a taste of a model ideal that one isn’t. Gratitude is expected to be expressed, especially through the body, for the self-edifying self-degradation – both mental such as here or physical such as in the aesthetics of the mutilated hero – allow one to embody the new, ideal ‘Real Man,’ much like the evocation of war memorabilia may be utilized in order to ‘[promote] national identity, national unity, and the idea of the worthiness of sacrificing oneself to save one’s country’ (Stockdale 145).
The old woman’s claim that it is up to Omon to ‘choose […] which god is best’ (68) reflects the possibility and surviving presence of freedom of choice and personal faith and identity, even within Soviet society. One may also argue that the presence of religious characters such as the old woman reveal the perseverance of faith and divinity unconstrained by the shackles of the regime; she rejects the notions of post-humanism by claiming that ‘man isn’t God’ (68), thus challenging the Soviet’s molding and remodeling of man into a “better” human being that attempts to be in alignment with the unrealistic ideals of the nation. Omon’s adoption of the name Ra challenges the Soviet contrivances of purpose and identity, allowing him to identify himself with a foreign figure separate from those imposed upon him. Omon Ra concludes that if he ‘really was made in a god’s image, then it should be this one’ (68), circling back to the idea of faith and divinity being intertwined with the self’s journey towards an idealized self as ‘the faithful falcon of the Motherland’ (70), one that is established upon a pedestal to strive towards embodying. Nevertheless, still he ‘[hangs] in brilliant blackness on the invisible threads of fate and trajectory’ (112), because despite reimagining the model of his pursuit, his ambitions are exploited regardless for the sake of furthering the Soviet’s cultural identity.
Soviet-era divinity and faith within the book are explored as tools of mass control against the backdrop of the Soviet Union’s battle for world influence and its attempts at enriching the image of Soviet identity. Pelevin reimagines faith within the secular nationalistic dimensions of Soviet society, a landscape that remodels religious faith into undying loyalty to a national ideal and striving to represent the myths and tales that reflect and sustain it. Faith is secularized and empirically expressed through the body’s mutilation, a sort of posthumanist ideology in which ‘the ideological simulacrum enables the individual experience of transcendental self-sacrifice’ (Gomel 346), despite ultimately failing to fulfil the individual. Nevertheless, Pelevin finalizes the novel with a positive note by ultimately reflecting the perseverance of faith in oneself amidst a demand for submission; the role Omon Ra takes upon himself to, much like Ra, ‘battle with the forces of darkness as he sails along the nether’ (69), leads him to discovering the falsity of the Soviet cosmonaut operations, and echoing his freedom to choose whatever god he liked the best, he must now ‘decide where to go’ (162).
Spencer Siles
Works Cited:
Pelevin, Victor. “Omon Ra.” Translated by Andrew Bromfield, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
Ruan, Jianzhang. “Examination of the Religious Nature of Secular Nationalism.” Churchill House, Harrow International School, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202419304017
Kaganovsky, Lilya. “INTRODUCTION: ʺBodies That Matter”. “How the Soviet Man Was Unmade Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity under Stalin.” University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. p1-18. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qh907
Gomel, Elana. “CHAPTER 1: Our Posthuman Past: Subjectivity, History, and Utopia in Late-Soviet Science Fiction”. “The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia.” Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018. p37-54. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1zjg354
Khagi, Sofya. “Power and the Aerial Sublime in Victor Pelevin.” The Russian Review, Volume 82, Issue 4, October 2023. p582-598. 2023. 10.1111/russ.12521
R. Whealen, Michael. Review of The Porcupine, by Julian Barnes, & Omon Ra, by Victor Pelevin. Publication in College Quarterly, Fall 1996 – Volume 4 Number 1. https://collegequarterly.ca/1996-vol04-num01-fall/reviews/whealen2.html
Stockdale, Melissa Kirschke. “United in Gratitude: Honoring Soldiers and Defining the Nation.” “Mobilizing the Russian Nation: Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. p140–165. Print. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316145449.007
Gomel, Elena. “Viktor Pelevin and Literary Postmodernism in Post-Soviet Russia.” Narrative, Vol 21, No. 3 (October 2013). The Ohio State University, 2013. p339-351. 10.1353/nar.2013.0014
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