The Bureaucracy: Defining Moral Boundaries in Literature from the Soviet Union Anonymous College

An extensive bureaucracy is one of the identifying features of the modern nation state. Distributed government administration allows for those factors which drive the state to function smoothly; without it, enforcing legal codes and economic policies would be impossible. During Stalin’s reign, the USSR’s rapid growth necessitated an expeditious rollout of a bureaucratic system to control the strict regulations that accompanied collectivization, the growth of transportation systems, and the massive prison and labor camp programs. This expansion put bureaucrats in positions of great power, with little oversight. Soviet literature is saturated with dissident literature, created by authors frustrated by both the structural abuse of the working/peasant class, and by the inhumane treatment of the clandestine Gulag system. In systems where those in positions of power are given such autonomy, the question of how superiors act when they hate their inferiors comes up often. “Berries” and “Story of an Illness” are two stories that demonstrate the moral boundaries of the government workers who detest their inferiors, while “Bees and People” serves as a warning against pushing those boundaries.

Varlam Shalamov’s “Berries”, published in...