Creating Posthumous Legacies: The Power to Consecrate and to Blaspheme. Vadim Andreevʼs Memories of Childhood

Vadim Andreevʼs (1902–1976) memoir Childhood (Detstvo) was arguably the most influential text in the re-branding of Leonid Andreev (1871–1919) for the Soviet literary market in the 1960s. In this intriguing psychological description, Vadim privileges the role played by his mother in the life of his father, while minimizing the role of his stepmother, Anna Ilʼinichna Andreeva (1885–1948). This was complicated by Vera Andreevaʼs (1910–1986) attempts to counter these claims in her own memoir A House on the Black Rivulet (Dom na Chernoi rechke), published a decade after her brotherʼs. Using the critical vocabulary of Pierre Bourdieu, I will argue that there are two compelling reasons why Vadim essentially erases Anna Ilʼinichna from his memoir. One is personal. Vadimʼs experience with his stepmother was one of alienation and he isolates her in turn. The second is economic. By dividing Andreevʼs life into two halves in which relative values are given to each based on family and locale, Vadim positions himself as the only remaining representative of his fatherʼs posthumous legacy. Childhood was meant to increase his own symbolic capital beyond that of his living relatives. In the phraseology of Bourdieu, Vadim wished to be the lone creator of the creator.