Moloch (Kuprin)
| Author | Alexander Kuprin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Молох |
| Country | Russian Empire |
| Language | Russian |
| Publisher | Russkoye Bogatstvo (1896) |
|
Publication date
|
1896 |
| Media type | print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Moloch (Молох) is a short novel by Alexander Kuprin, first published in Russkoye Bogatstvo's December 1896 issue. A sharp critique of the rapidly growing Russian capitalism and a reflection of the growing industrial unrest in the country, it is considered Kuprin's first major work.
Engineer Andrey Bobrov works for a ruthless capitalist industrial enterprise, feeling more and more uncomfortable with what is going on around him. After losing Nina, the woman he loves, to the amoral industrialist Kvashnin who owns that enterprise, he suffers a nervous breakdown and is left a broken man, prone to frenzied and futile debates with his own 'double'. The story's finale hints at the outbreak of a workers' revolt.
According to scholar Nicholas Luker, "thematically Moloch belongs firmly in the 1890s, and reflects many of the social and economic issues of that decade."
The second half of the 1800s saw the rapid development of Russian capitalism, with its concomitant industrial expansion. As her rail network was enlarged and her textile, metallurgical, and mining industries expanded, Russia's output rose steadily. The All-Russian Industrial Exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod, to which Kuprin refers in "The Yuzovsky Works," was designed to demonstrate the impressive achievements of Russian industry. But with the industrial boom came growing unrest among the new working class, its ranks swelled by poor peasants driven off the land by such agrarian crises as the famine of 1891-1892.
A series of industrial disturbances of the mid-1890s are reflected in the workers' revolt at the end of Moloch.
The story was first published in Russkoye Bogatstvo, No. 12, December issue. In a heavily edited version, it appeared in The Stories, a 1903 collection published by Gorky's Znaniye. The same year it was published by Donskaya Retch (The Don Speaking), a Rostov-on-Don-based publishing house. There the final scene was absent altogether. The process of the text's moderation continued while the author was preparing it for Adolf Marks' The Complete Kuprin series. Judging by the author's letter to Nikolai Mikhaylovsky, originally the last chapter looked much more radical than its final version. Eventually its tone was considerably toned down according to Mikhaylovsky's recommendations.
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