BREAKING STALIN’S NOSE, written and illustrated by Eugene Yelchin

Bibliography

Yelchin, Eugene.  Breaking Stalin’s Nose.  New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2011.  ISBN: 978-0-8050-9216-5

Plot Summary

After his father is unjustly arrested, young Sasha must rethink all he has been taught to be true about being a Young Pioneer in Stalinist Russia.

Critical Analysis

It only takes describing the events of two days in the life of Sasha, a ten year old boy living in Moscow with his father in a communal apartment, for Eugene Yelchin to adequately immerse the reader into the world of Stalin’s Russia.  While the brevity of this story and its use of illustrations may make students think this is a book for younger children, it most certainly is not.  For readers at an age (9-12 years) where they are beginning to learn that the world is not always as it seems, readers will identify with Yelchin’s realistic characters.  While some of the adult characters may seem villainous and one-dimensional (his teacher, the principal, a state security officer), it is his younger characters with which readers will best identify.  This is not coincidental.  The adults have undergone years of fear and propaganda at the hands of a totalitarian regime; this process is just beginning for the children.  While not immune to the effects of the state’s brainwashing, it is the children who are not yet too scared to see the gray areas between right and wrong while the adults see the world in a much more one-dimensional way.  And in this setting, it is often an eat or be eaten world.  Readers in this age group are also beginning to understand the difficulty when faced with the challenge of doing what is easy or what is right.  This theme is exemplified in the conflicts between students Sasha and Vovka, Vovka and Finkelstein, and in the neighbor’s deceit against Sasha and his father. It is these complex themes paired with relatable characters that grab the attention of the reader so completely.

Yelchin’s use of an overheard literature lesson on “The Nose” emphasizes another theme of the story relevant to preteens: learning to think independently.  While the teacher tries to get his students to understand that “when we blindly believe in someone else’s idea of what is right or wrong for us as individuals, sooner or later our refusal to make our own choices could lead to the collapse of the entire political system.”  Heavily influenced by their indoctrination, his students have no idea what he is talking about, and he is dismissed by Sasha as being “suspicious.”  After all, he doesn’t “use words you hear on the radio” like the other teachers.

Yelchin’s writing style produces an overall feeling of nightmarish, crippling paranoia.  This setting is essential to understanding Stalin’s rule of Russia in the 1930s and 1940s.  Details about life here are also authentic: how people dress, the sparse conditions of their living quarters, and the prevalence of uniforms and flags essential to statism.  His illustrations complement the text often in a surrealistic way that helps express how Sasha’s world is being turned upside down.  While Sasha’s future is unknown, the reader is left feeling that it may not be as bleak as his past.

Awards and Review Excerpts

2012 Newberry Honor

Booklist Top Ten Historical Fiction Book for Youth

Horn Book Best Children’s Book of the Year

• Horn Book: “This brief novel gets at the heart of a society that asks its citizens, even its children, to report on relatives and friends. Appropriately menacing illustrations by first-time novelist Yelchin add a sinister tone.”
• San Francisco Chronicle: “Black-and-white drawings march across the pages to juxtapose hope and fear, truth and tyranny, small moments and historical forces, innocence and evil.”
• School Library Journal: “Yelchin skillfully combines narrative with dramatic black-and-white illustrations to tell the story of life in the Soviet Union under Stalin.”

Connections

• Using the author’s website, have students delve further into Sasha’s world of Stalinist Russia.  They can explore Moscow in the 1930s, Sasha’s school, his communal living quarters, and Lubyanka Prison as well as other topics.  http://www.eugeneyelchinbooks.com/breakingstalinsnose/synopsis.php
• Eugene Yelchin himself lived in Soviet Russia before coming to the United States in 1983 (this book is dedicated to his father who lived under Stalin’s rule).  Have students research biographies of famous Soviet defectors before the fall of Communism (examples could include  Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter; choreographer George Balanchine; composer Maxim Shostakovich; physicist George Gamow; tennis star Martina Navratilova; gymnast Nadia Comaneci; and actor and ballet danseur Alexander Gudunov among many others).

Personal Reflections

I really enjoyed this book, and I especially liked how thoroughly it pulls the reader into the story.  As someone who leans fairly libertarian, I found aspects of this book truly horrifying and even sensed myself feeling paranoid while reading it!  It is an excellent depiction of life in a totalitarian regime from an author who himself lived under Communist rule.