Breaking Stalin's Nose

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-15

Chapters 16-22

Chapters 23-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Background

Authorial Context: Eugene Yelchin

Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to violent repression and antisemitism.

Author Eugene Yelchin was born to Jewish parents in Leningrad in 1956. He was educated in the Soviet school system and lived in a communal unit that was the inspiration for Sasha Zaichik’s apartment in Breaking Stalin’s Nose. Yelchin worked in the theater after leaving school, creating sets, and later focusing on children’s theatre. He emigrated to California, where he studied film and then worked in advertising. Yelchin began illustrating children’s books in 2007 and writing and illustrating his own books shortly thereafter. Breaking Stalin’s Nose was his first novel (“About.” Eugene Yelchin).

Growing up, Yelchin’s father was a paradox to his son: “He understood the oppressive reality of living under communism, yet he was a devout communist,” Yelchin writes (164). Yelchin admits that their relationship suffered when he emigrated to the United States and began to question communism and his family’s experiences in the USSR. The book’s dedication reads: “To my father, who survived the Great Terror.”

“Much of the novel is autobiographical,” Yelchin claims (166). Despite attending school in a more relaxed environment than his protagonist Sasha Zaichik, Yelchin suffered from the stifling effects of communism on his creative and critical thinking, and like Zaichik, was forced to make a life-altering decision. “Sasha and I are similar in the way we react to the world around us…we have a moral line we would never cross, no matter what our circumstances are,” he writes (166). Where Sasha Zaichik decided to walk away from the Young Pioneers after learning what the cost would be, Yelchin left his homeland, leaving communism behind.

Historical Context: Stalin’s Regime

Breaking Stalin’s Nose is set during Stalin’s reign. Stalin came to power in 1928 after a power struggle following Vladimir Lenin’s death. Unsatisfied with Stalin’s rule, several high-ranking communist officials called for his removal. When one popular official, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated, a large plot to overthrow Stalin was uncovered. In response, Stalin clamped down on all of Soviet society and began the Great Terror in 1936, a purge to irradicate his rivals from positions of power. The purges were led by the Secret Police, who targeted the civilian population once the military and government had been fully purged. Through arrests, torture, and executions, the Secret Police ruled the citizenry by fear. Neighbors began to report on neighbors, students on teachers, teachers on students, and husbands on wives. By 1938, the purge was slowing, and Stalin announced that enemies of the state had been eradicated. He blamed the mass executions and torture on the two heads of the Secret Police and had them both executed.

Breaking Stalin’s Nose is set in Moscow during the Great Terror. The protagonist’s father, a member of the Secret Police, is himself arrested on suspicion of spying after betraying his American wife and being awarded a medal by Stalin himself for his ability to purge the party of anti-communist forces. This demonstrates the reach of the Secret Police and highlights how nobody was safe from the terror of the regime. When his father is arrested, neighbors, family, and friends abandon Sasha, who ends up homeless, destitute, and disillusioned on the streets of Moscow after two whirlwind days that transformed him from a devout follower of the cult of personality surrounding Stalin to an orphan who no longer wished to serve the state.