Before Sunrise

Mikhail Zoshchenko, whom many know only as a satirical writer, created one of the most significant books on the border between fiction and a scientific study of the human psyche. Why do people sometimes suffer unbearably when there seems to be no objective cause? Today everyone knows the word “depression,” but in the first half of the 20th century science knew much less. Many decades before the popular psychology boom, Mikhail Zoshchenko became interested in the scientific method of Ivan Pavlov, a physiologist and the creator of the science of higher nervous activity. He tried to conduct an experiment on himself: to overcome his own terrible illness that had pursued Zoshchenko since adolescence. In the autobiographical novella “Before Sunrise,” the author goes through dramatic memories of his early years, trying to understand what exactly harmed his psyche, explores the nature of human suffering, and tells how he searched for a way to conquer his fears and bring his mind and feelings under control.
The first two parts of the novella were published in the magazine “Oktyabr” in 1943, but then censorship didn’t allow further publication, and the writer was subjected to public hostility and persecution. In Soviet press, the novella was condemned as “harmful” and dismantled for the fact that Zoshchenko writes about “the trifling hustle of subjective feelings”—about those very depths of our subconsciousness, paths through which are so fascinating to the modern person.