Documentary graphic novel as Public History in Russia

Public History in Ravenna. An archival event that still matters.

In June 2017 I attended the 4th annual conference of the International Federation for Public History (#IFHP). I was glad to present my project of documentary graphic novel for the panel held by Dr.Irina Savelieva (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow).

Here I publish the full text of my keynote:

Documentary graphic novel as Public History in Russia

drawing from my documentary graphic novel "Black Rocks", October 2017

Dear collegues, Ladies and gentlemen, Signore e Signori,

Today I have an honor to participate in my first international conference here in Ravenna. I would like to present you my topic, Documentary graphic novel as Public History in Russia, by telling you my own story of documentary novel creation put in the more wide context of #publichistory making in Russia.

INTRO

The idea of a documentary graphic novel came to me a year ago, while I was working on my PhD project. Like many others, I was deeply passionate about the subject of my studies, it was #childrendelinquency, and willing to deepen it for years ahead. The only problem was the consciousness that it would have a more than a limited impact and the questions I ask and try to answer would remain unheard except by my scientific director of course. All the work and passion for research ’s meant only to bring us into another level of academic hierarchy to potentially give us a hope to one day find a research position somewhere, without any guarantees, since places are scare and financial support rare. These highly demotivating thoughts I shared with many other students. As long as my academic interest is social history, the relations between State, its institutions and the society through the topic of children delinquency repression, I wanted to enter a more wide-spread and inclusive discussion which could possibly lead to address today’s issues.

At the same time as doing my master, I was working as an editor for a Russian public history project, digitalizing and reviewing personal diaries of XXth century. This project opened me up to the fact the history may really interest different publics and perfectly work without an academic and institutional frame (though the founder of this project has a PhD in soviet history, this project wasn't made by amateurs). So I started to think over how to turn my subject into a project that may be more public-friendly. And the answer came from another passion I have, the art.

Creative writing, storytelling, large context

During my previous researches, I found some materials on an anti-stalin soviet communist group of youth from post WWII years that I could not use for my master thesis. But this time I looked on this material with different eyes and understood it can be converted into a story told in drawings. It took a while to formulate it in a scenario and begin to draw though.

Put aside that the topic of the antistalin youth resistance isn't well known, the main originality of it is that all the job is done by one person - the research part, the scenario and the drawings. It gives me the opportunity for introspection and also the possibility to make the entire research work done in drawings, and to affirm that graphic novel can be an alternative form of making a PhD work, and I believe, a better way to do it in a sense that it can communicate with a larger public. It can potentially bring a positive impact by sending the knowledge directly from the university chair to a reader who would never read it in its academic paper form.

My #documentary_graphic_novel narrates the story of one of the most numerous underground group contesting Stalin politics in the post-war years USSR. By 1947, Boris #Batuev, 16 years old, grew conscious about the immense gap between propaganda and the misery people live in the #USSR devastated by war. He blames #Staline for this situation, highlighting the hypocrisy in the society, bad management and the burden of cult of personality. Important to mention, Boris is not a regular soviet boy. His father is the second commisar of the the Voronezh region, (commissar is a title for soviet officials, let’s say his activities are those of vice-mayor), a sincere devoted communist. Boris is well-educated, talented boy burning with desire to get back ideals of communism of the period previous to Staline’s rise. He decides to create "the party of the Communist Youth" aiming to impeach Staline in the future. Within a year he managed to establish it: his net covered about 90 people, aged between 15 and 21. The exact number isn't known, because of the inner organization aiming to protect its members - the classical revolutionary model of group of five was implemented (within the group of five, members know each other, but only the head of them knows other heads of five, but not members of groups). That successfully worked, the KGB couldn't find most of the party members, but the heads were betrayed by one of theirs. Police investigation was long and resulted in the sentence without conviction to the court, an eloquent example of wide-spread practice in Staline law - the Special Council of the NKVD in Moscow states its decision and communicates it to the sentenced. The signature on the paper is formality, it always can be faked afterwords. The following story is this of Goulag journey until liberation coming thanks to Stalin’s death in 1953.

The #Goulag history in itself, well-known by large public thanks to Gulag Archipel, is widely studied. It makes part of Stalin’s atrocities history and would not specifically need a one more presentation. But in my documentary graphic novel I would like to arise different question. First of all, it’s the story of resistance, rather than repression. The story of indomitable will and a naif hope, idealistic, but serious youth ready for personal sacrifice in the darkest times, people not at all on their knees. This way I want to show another side of soviet history, the side that was neglected while everybody was concentrated on soviet people martyr-ship through Stalin’s rule. Second, the history of organized anti-stalin resistance during 1940ties is practically unknown by large public (except for general Vlasov, but this is very negatively viewed). But more importantly, in today political context, we observe a certain renaissance of cult of personality in Russia. It goes along with a history review, creation of uncritical myths widely spread by mass media. It doesn't concern all the epochs, of course, it’s not the complete change of educational system, that hopefully is unlikely to come up. But the accents are made in a way that goes to manipulate history onto nationalistic path. That’s particularly obvious with the Great victory celebration with the parade becoming the more and more popular, with the voices raising for the greater militarisation and the constant mis en opposition of Russia and the Western world. Which reminds us this history lesson we’re not able to learn well for more than half of a century.

So my documentary graphic novel could remind the larger public that the history is never homogenous, and society is much more complex than nationalistic ideal of one people united by one and unanimous will.

Graphic novel in Russia

Given this context, the choice of graphic novel as a medium can be questionable, since it’s primarily meant for Russian public. When there was a boom of graphic literature in the US and Europe, first of all with popular comic books, but starting from 1970ties with graphic novels going through more tough topics, it was very different in Russia. Graphic literature, or illustrated books (the term used in the USSR) were made for children and not considered seriously (here we see similarities with the perception of graphic literature as made primarily for entertainment). The birth of Russian comics can be traced to September of 1956, when the famous cartoonist and illustrator Ivan Semyonov, with the support of his colleagues, published the first issue of Vesyolye Kartinki (The Merry Pictures).

From approximately the latter half of the 1980s up to now we can speak about Russian comics establishing itself in its modern format. But there were only few documentary graphic novels, to quote some of them, ZHukov, in 1991, (based on soviet general biography), and Peter the Great (1992). Unfortunately from the middle of 1990, graphic literature projects were shut down. This is connected to the general situation on the market. There is a certain revival of it in 2000 due in particular to the popularity of manga comics. During this years new readers grew up, those who didn't view comics and graphic literature with condescending eye. From 2012 onwards a new development phase has been in progress. It’s connected with the appearance of specialized comic shops throughout the country. A great number of projects have started, involving many Russian artists. The most large-scale of these projects, like the publishing house Bubble, take it upon themselves to attract a wider audience of readers. The popularity has undoubtedly been growing, and the major reason for that is of course the worldwide success of the screen adaptations of the classics of the superhero genre. As a result, comics have even drawn the attention of people who took little interest in them.

In recent years many new tiny publishing houses appeared in Russia. They are often run by people passionate by graphic literature, and deeply connected with both readers and auteurs. According to editors from 12 publishing houses in Russia, comics and graphic novels in Russia is a growing market, and its public becomes the more and more diverse. But at the same time, this market mostly holds on translated production, because the choice is much wider on the european and american market. Russian comics and graphic novels makers can not saturate this market today. So there is a necessity of creation, and also a certain interest in setting trends, which can be documentary graphic novels creation.

Graphic novel making

Speaking about graphic novel making, I’d like to relate it to my proper experience.

I got lucky from the beginning. One of the most important primary sources for my documentary graphic novel is published. It’s a biographical novel, Black rocks, written by one of the heads of the party of the Communist Youth, and its organizer’s closest friend, Anatoly Zhigulin. After he’s been released from Goulag he became a poet and writer. He gives a rather personal perspective on the events, but his novel let us take out details and verify facts. To do so I worked in state archives, literature museum archive and personal archives of Baturin’s family. I also took interview with Baturin’s sister, 92 years old lady, who wasn't member of the Youth party, but played an important role saving them from accusation on armed-uprise and attempt to kill Stalin which would have lead them to the capital punishment.

Here you can see my heroine, Vladilena Batueva, the day of the interview, and drawings from my graphic novel picturing her while throwing arms in the sewer gutter.

As you can see, the primarily collection of the sources isn't different from this that should be done for every research work to be published as an academic paper. It starts with studying the existing works on the related subjects and the quest for sources. On the other hand, as you come closer to giving the form to your research results, here it becomes really different. First of all, you realize the power of the detail, because everything is lying on that: not a single picture can be done without an additional research. Like for every other work attempting on portraying historical reality, you should get sure you give your heroes the right clothes, haircut of the epoch, you verify decorations and even landscapes. And it brings to your work an additional power that a written history can not bring - the power of image. The graphic novel in a sense can be seen like a museum collection, back-staging artifacts, things, old plans, photos. But bringing all this lines together conveys restrictions and limitations. They can be due to a luck of material or to specific demands of the plot, or to the chosen artistic manner.

Just to list some examples from my work:

The graphic novels narrates the story of a wide group of people, and if for the most important people I have photos, I know how they looked, for many others I have no or very few materials to create images. For example, two main protagonist, Boris and Anatoly, I have their photos from practically every age and from every angle. But for one of their close friends who I depict in many important moments I have only two photos.

There is always a choice of how to dress my heroes, what furniture give them. For instance on this picture you can see Anatoly and Boris going to school. Their holding school bags. And these bags were a matter of additional research because I knew most children didn't have school bags in post wars years. They had military bags like this (picture) or just bags, actually whatever they managed to find. But my protagonists are from families who had a more advantageous position. At least, Boris definitely had a school bag. And Anatoly probably too, but that’s not sure. There is no evidence of that. But technically he could. Another thing about the bag, is that school bags were not made to be like backpack. You could only hold it with your hand. All these details make the process of drawing extremal complex and slow. It’s the matter of eternal verifying and small previous researches.

Another problem is composition. Because, even if in Anatoly’s biographical novels many scenes are well described, we, in one hand, can not be sure it was exactly like that, and on the other, even if we admit it was, the problem of back-staging it remains. We can only imagine how exactly they were sitting round the table and how they were dressed. Many details are plausible, but impossible to verify. Though, the graphical novel remains documentary since I don't create additional scenes, stick to reproduce details of the epoch, landscapes, buildings based on archival documents and photos. Like for instance, here is one of the first pictures from the graphic novel. It shows the city where the action took place, Voronezh, horribly destroyed by the WWII. The drawing partly reproduces archival photo from a tiny collection of photos taken from soviet plane flying over the city in 1943. I added here the map showing the location of the city to help the reader, but it also rhymes with the view on the city from the plane: from a great height it can be seen like a map. Here of course it’s an artistic choice and not a direct reality. But the aim of the graphic novel is also to appeal to the reader, to make the history speak to him in an emotional, understandable language. It leads to making choices, emphasizing one scenes, and reducing others.

The proportion of thematic representation serves the purpose of the narration rather than historical truth. In this account it can be seen to be different from a classic academic paper, but actually it is not. Because even if in an academic article choices are made to make accent on this or another aspect of the problem. It ’s always seen through some lens - of economic history rather than cultural or vice versa. Let’s say that the angle of view, the manner of questioning history in the documentary graphic novel is trying to look on it with the reader’s eye, to think of how he can better understand the complex reality behind facts and scenes. It’s also quite pedagogical and psychological in this way. But there is no objection to using it in a school book. It’s quite the opposite. If we want to educate, if we want to communicate history we must think about our public and give her a well elaborated, honest scientifically fair product that appeals.

Click here to check on the IFHP activities and Università di Bologna events

https://ifph.hypotheses.org/1271

https://events.unibo.it/ifph2017/documentary-graphic-novel-as-public-history-in-russia

#russianhistory #russiangraphicnovel #russiancomics #publichistory #XXcenturyhistory #blackrocks #antistalin_youth_resistance #conference #ravenna #natashaburyka #nataliaburyka