ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the problem of being caught between past and future in Baym Dnyepr, his massive and most explicitly socialist-realist novel, in particular its second volume, published in 1940. Superficial acceptance of the Soviet version of history is not, however, the end of the story in Baym Dnyepr. It argues that David Bergelson undermines the socialist-realist and socialist project of building the bright future by positioning the present moment, the 'now' of the novel as 'always already/not yet'. The chapter explores the tension between the monumental and that which disrupts it: the contingent, the corporeal, and the chronotope of 'always already/not yet'. It argues that the novel stages the problem of not catching up as a problem of writing, as a self-reflexive commentary. The chapter shows how the problem of 'always already/not yet' emerges in the novel's reflections on commemoration, memory, and the monumental.
