Satirism In Nervous People

Mikhail Zoschenko was a satirist whose works coincided with a peak in Russian (or Soviet) satirical humor under Lenin, where his works first appears in Soviet newspapers in 1923. Usually written from perspective of ordinary people on the street, these stories express the experience of the ordinary Soviet citizen struggling to live in the 1920s and 1930s. These struggles included theft and corruption, housing shortages, and a new ideological language under the Soviet state. While NEP was meant by Lenin generate capital and solve the country’s economic issues, it also allowed satirical writings and writers, such as Zoschenko, to flourish. Zoschenko’s voice remains subtle but constant throughout the collection of his stories. While at times, he seems to be simply conveying everyday Soviet life, other times expresses a personal sympathy for fallout caused by economic hardships and corruption in the emerging Soviet Union.
In “Nervous People”, Zoschenko refers to the anxiety of everyday life in the Soviet Union. This story involves a dispute over one women using another women’s brush to clean her primus stove. As everyone gets involved in the conflict, the
Others lived in barracks or dormitories for housing workers. For some families, to gain a room in a communal apartment represented an improvement in their living situations, especially if they lived desired cities such as Leningrad of Moscow. In “Crisis”, Zoschenko sarcastically depicts this enthusiasm with which people walked into terrible living conditions. Throughout the story, a tiny bathroom is slowly filled with new residents who seem more than cheerful about sharing a bathroom to live in with so many other people. As awkward as this story is, many of these depictions are not unfounded. As these cities swelled with new residents, and the state’s industrial machine was neglecting the housing sector, living conditions degenerated