“Весьма своеобразный всеобщий эквивалент”. Деньги в советской сатирической литературе 1930-х годов

The Socialist Realist production novel of the Stalin period does not deal with the problem of money, though it played an enormous role as a mechanism of compensation for the shortcomings of the Soviet planned economy. Only satirical authors focussed on the “small world” in which people were preoccupied by the question how to survive in hard times. Texts like Ilʼf and Petrovʼs The Golden Calf, Zoshchenkoʼs Blue Book and Bulgakovʼs The Master and Margarita focus on different aspects of the matter. Ilʼf and Petrovʼs anarchist trickster hero Ostap Bender entertains his readers by his adventures bordering on mimicry and provocation. Zoshchenko aims at a didactical treatment of the problem but his amusing and “barbarous” stories rather give evidence of the fact that money continues to spoil the human character even in Soviet times. Bulgakovʼs unmasking of the behavior of the Moscow population results in the insight that striving for money seems to be an ineradicable human quality. One can understand why money is a subversive topic in Soviet literature.