Breaking Stalin's Nose

Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to violent repression and antisemitism.

The nose motif helps explain the Russian social fixation with status and rank and the damaging effects this has on individuality. This is indicated in Yelchin’s satirical portrayal, in Sasha’s daydream, of Stalin as a sentient nose to Nikolai Gogol’s famous satirical 1836 short story “The Nose.” The Gogol story is set exactly 100 years before the setting in Yelchin’s novel, which shows the continuation, despite regime changes through the end of the imperialist monarchy and the Bolshevik revolution to the rise of communism and the advent of the USSR, of this very Russian characteristic. In a moment of satirical dramatic irony, Sasha says, “Could something like this happen now? No way. So Why should Soviet children read such lies?” (112).

In “The Nose” Yelchin puts an important message in the heroic literature teacher’s lecture. “‘What ‘The Nose’ so vividly demonstrates to us today,’ says Luzhko, ‘is that when we blindly believe in someone else’s idea of what is right or wrong for us as individuals, eventually our refusal to make our own choices could lead to the collapse of the entire political system.