We’ve asked our followers on Facebook and Telegram which Russian author and/or work they can confidently recommend to other Russia Beyond readers. Many have mentioned the good old classics: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (‘The Idiot’ and ‘White Nights’), Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’, Mikhail Bulgakov’s ‘Master and Margarita’, short stories by Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev and his novels - considered to be “true, realistic portraits of Russian provincial life during Tsarist times” - and even poems of the genius Osip Mandelstam, who died in the Gulag system.
However, there were also some works and authors, mentioned by our followers that pleasantly surprised us, and we couldn’t resist sharing them with you.
1. Georgi Vladimov. ‘Faithful Ruslan’
Millwall Alan: “Only a short story, but one of the best by any author, any nationality. Entirely narrated by a dog”.
A Gulag camp in Siberia is being dissolved. Guard dogs are being set free, but one of them, nicknamed Ruslan, doesn’t understand what happened. He sees a former prisoner nearby, and starts following him everywhere. The man thinks the dog is showing loyalty to him, but in fact, Ruslan is continuing to guard him, as he was trained to.
Once, a group of workers arrives at the railway station and marches to a former campsite in order to arrange the construction of a building. All the former guard dogs see them – and guard them thinking it’s a new portion of prisoners…
‘Faithful Ruslan’ was written in the mid-1960s in the ‘harsh style’, common for the realistic art of that time. It was first published in the West, only seeing the light of day in Russia during Perestroika. Georgi Vladimov was a Soviet dissident who was forced to leave the country in the early 1980s. The author used to say that he wanted to show “hell through the eyes of a dog that thinks it’s in heaven”. In fact, he managed to reflect how blindly following the rules can lead to a perverted worldview.
2. Yuri Rytkheu. Novels about Chukotka
Oliver: “First hand novels about life in Russia's far-eastern Chukotka. You have to take into account that most of his work was written during the Soviet era. There are positive and critical elements about life in the USSR, which makes it even more interesting.”
Sanzanipolo: “Understanding more of his roots may help in understanding the great Siberian-American Diaspora.”
This Soviet writer of Chukotkan origin has now almost been forgotten in Russia. Yuri Rytkheu wrote many novels and short stories where he depicted his native Far East peninsula with its tough weather, cold waters and rural realities.
Yuri Rytkeu is a rare example of an author from the dwindling indigenous ethnicities, who wrote mostly in the Chukchi (Chukot) language, and became critically acclaimed around the Soviet Union. His novels were published in the most prominent literary magazines, and already after the Perestroika he was heavily promoted in Chukotka by then-governor, Roman Abramovich.
At the same time he was translated into numerous foreign languages, including English, German, French and Japanese. Among his most well-known novels, translated into English are: ‘From the Nomad Tent to the University’, ‘A Dream in the Polar Fog’, ‘The Chukchi Bible’ and ‘When the Whales Leave’.
3. Yevgeny Zamyatin. ‘We’
David Truman: “An unbelievably prescient forecast of the totalitarian prospect in Bolshevism”.
Zamyatin’s dystopian sci-fi novel ‘We’ (1920) describes a totalitarian state very reminiscent of wartime Communism, in which even a person’s private life is under the authorities' control. Soviet censors saw the novel as a lampoon on the Soviet system (and were right to do so), and perceived some of its references to the events of the Civil War as unflattering to the Bolsheviks.
The book was banned in the USSR until 1988, despite being published in the West in the 1920s. The author was even arrested, but, thanks to support of some influential people, Stalin allowed Zamyatin to leave the country instead. The dystopian novel is said to have greatly influenced both George Orwell and Aldous Huxley to write their ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’.
4. Vassily Grossman. ‘Stalingrad’
Paul B.: “Absolutely breathtaking. Character, POV, the SMELL of the earth and grass out on the steppe, incredibly vivid scenes with Hitler & his officers, and each character faithfully (it feels) and fully revealed to us. Translated by Roberth Chandler & his wife Elizabeth. Edited by Chandler & Yuri Bit-Yunan from the dizzying torrent of editions & versions, as the censors did their worst. Happily their worst has not prevented the novel from finally being fully delivered into the world.”
As a military correspondent, Vasily Grossman was an eyewitness of the Battle of Stalingrad, and wrote a number of first-hand accounts about it. In 1942, in the midst of the epic battle on the Volga, which halted the German advance into the Soviet Union, Grossman conceived of a novel that was to be called ‘Stalingrad’.
Grossman is sometimes referred to as the “Leo Tolstoy of the 20th century”. Meanwhile, he also wrote about World War II - including ‘The People Immortal’ and ‘Life and Fate’, describing not only the horrors of war, but also how the lives of ordinary people are ruined by the very turbulent historical events - which Grossman himself suffered, his mother having been killed by the Nazis in the Jewish ghetto in the Soviet town of Berdichev (modern-day Ukraine).
Read our interview with translator Robert Chandler.
5. Eugene Vodolazkin ‘Laurus’
Martin Edasi: “A life-changing reading.”
Sarah Diligenti: “Eugene Vodolazkin, all his books are amazing, and Laurus, which I have read 4 times already, is a masterpiece.”
The setting is medieval Russia. The young Arseny’s bride-to-be dies during childbirth. He believes that the blame rests on his shoulders, since they weren’t married, and decides to devote himself to a life of prayer for the salvation of his fiancée’s soul. Taking the name Laurus, Arseny becomes a wanderer, and makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, before finally settling down as a hermit monk in the forest, where he receives and heals the sick.
Vodolazkin was the first in modern literature to address the theme of holy fools, who feature prominently in the medieval history of Russia. After the release of the book in 2012, Vodolazkin - a philologist and expert on medieval Russia - was dubbed the “Russian Umberto Eco.” However, despite the obvious influence of the latter, ‘Laurus’ is a strikingly original novel imbued with a deft stylization of Old Russian speech (which was a real headache for translator Lisa Hayden!).
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