Trifonov's The House On The Embankment

In the novel, The House on the Embankment, Tifonov depicts political and social realities through a group of childhood friends who live through the reign of the Soviet Union. The novel takes the reader through the terrors of Stalin in the late 1930s through the re-Stalinization policies of Brezhnev in the 1970s. Retelling some parts of Tifonov’s own life, the journey of Glebov and his childhood friends explains the realities and effects of the building that “oppressed him, thrilled him and caused him agonies” (237). As a young country, the Soviet Union chose the path of authoritarianism similarly to Glebov moral choices affected his privileged outcome later in life. This novel reflects the core foundations of the Soviet Union as the metaphor

In the novel, Trifonov highlights the struggles with the secret police (NKVD) that were used to monitor and maintain power, The denouncement of the intelligentsia and special treatment for party elites and the manipulation of Soviet history.

The symbolism of inequality in the Soviet Union is personified in the massive apartment house itself. The large gray apartment building symbolizes the realities of Stalin’s reign of terror in the late 1930s. The shadows from the large apartment building in “the mornings it blocked the sun” and hid the oppressed people that dwelled in the small housing. Symbols of wealth, including the “sense of burning resentment Glebov” (201). The building was an apartment block “across the river from the Kremlin” (Lecture) and during this time Stalin was purging the party elites that exclusively lived in the house of “gigantic dimensions” (209). During the terror, thousands of citizens were murdered, including those who lived in the house, it is “estimated over 243 residents were purged during the terror” (Lecture). The author Trifonov, himself lived in the building during his

However, in the beginning of the novel, Glebov is looking at the furniture in the 1970s, which reflects the “new breed of Soviet citizens filled with luxuries” (Lecture). Humanized with Glebov political policy under Brezhnev swayed to favor party sympathizers who in return “went to special stores and they were given brown parcels with sturgeon, brandy perfumes and the pursuit of pleasure part of everyday life” (Lecture). In addition, the politics of this time were the Soviet party was a key part of higher learning. This meant that “children of party elites could choose to go to select elite universities that were closed to other children” (Lecture). Furthermore, mass shortages were common during the 1960s and the 1970s. An example of this is when Glebov and Lev meet at the Institution. The emphasis on Lev’s jacket’s “soft leather folds” shows the class privilege and massive inflation because the “America jackets’ cost a heap of money” (232). Satirically, another example is evident with Grandma Nila who sold everything because “a liter of milk in the market costs approximate value of a silver spoon”