The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

The mystery novels, not the spoofs, are the global bestsellers. Akunin has been heralded as the creator of a “Slavic Sherlock Holmes” and a “Russian Ian Fleming.” Na¨ıvely but intriguingly, some politically conservative commentators in the West see in Erast Fandorin a new type of positive, proto-capitalist hero on post-Soviet soil. All Russia’s previous heroes (so this argument goes) were discredited by the fall of communism: the starry-eyed dissident-to-the-death extremist, the slovenly nihilist, the nay-saying anarchist, the Bolshevik activist negligent of family and faith. The new Akunin-style detective, we are told, is a person who, in the tradition of sober disciplined Chekhov and the Calvinists, draws up rules only for himself – and follows those rules.41

Akunin has a readership in the many millions. Whether his spic-and-span, code-cracking detective Fandorin is taken for a role model among post-communist entrepreneurs, or becomes simply a Russian contribution to the world’s repertory of private detectives, remains to be seen. Chkhartishvili himself – a professional linguist and translator from the Japanese in addition to being Boris Akunin – has confessed that with his bashful, brave detective he had consciously aimed to fill the space in Russian bookstores between serious literature and trash. In an interview from 2004 he left a revealing testimony about the genesis of his Fandorin:

When I was a kid there was never a Russian literary character whom I could imitate. I was either Sherlock Holmes or d’Artagnan or some other bloody foreigner. You cannot pretend when you are 11 or 12 that you are a hero of Turgenev. What would you do? Sob? Complain? I

From the first Thaw to the end 247

approached this problem in a scientific way. I grafted a bit from every protagonist in Russian literature whom I admire. I took 10 per cent of Andrei Bolkonsky [from War and Peace], 10 per cent of Prince Myshkin [The Idiot], 10 per cent of Lermontov’s Pechorin [from Hero of our Time]. Then I added a recipe of my own design, mixed and stirred. At the beginning he looked like Frankenstein, a homunculus. Then miraculously he came to life . . .42

What do Prince Bolkonsky, Prince Myshkin, and Grigory Pechorin have in common that Akunin might have admired? Those three nineteenth-century Russian heroes are all aristocratic and to varying degrees disdainful or eccentric; they are attractive to women but flout society’s expectations; and (for very different reasons) each is fundamentally indifferent to the turmoil or suffering he causes in others. Their private lives are often shrouded from view; their public persona is invariably enigmatic and compelling. Each novel in the Fandorin series is dedicated “to the Nineteenth Century, when literature was great, the belief in progress boundless, and crimes were committed and solved with elegance and taste.”43 If only as the post-socialist ego ideal for a readership still uncertain how to come to terms with the twentieth century, Erast Fandorin is worth watching: a resplendent new Russian Hero for our Time.

Solzhenitsyn was not correct about postmodernism, of course: by no means is it always nihilistic or pessimistic. But he is certainly correct that Russian experiments in this realm are not to be reduced to a single moral standard. Nor will postmodernist authors, or their successors, relinquish their right to laugh at horror and annihilate it with their own playful devices. One efficient example of such postmodernist resistance is a poem by the recently deceased (d. 2007) Moscow Conceptualist Dmitry Prigov, “Dialogue No. 5.” This piece of quasi-doggerel short verse, Prigov’s favorite subversive form, is a contribution to the “Poet versus Tsar” theme in Russian literature, here cast as a conversation between Prigov and Stalin.44

To prepare for Prigov’s 46-line composition, let us recall the conversation between the fifteenth-century holy fool, Michael of Klopsko, and the monastery superior, discussed in Chapter 3. The Blessed Michael turns up at the monastery gate. Thesuperiorquestionshim; but insteadof answering, this yurodivyrepeats the question or throws it back at his interrogator unchanged. Prigov maneuvers his august interlocutor in a similarly holy-foolish manner. Stalin begins by shouting self-serving slogans, which Prigov dutifully repeats. Midway through, pilingupself-congratulatoryepithets,Stalin asks: “WhatelseisStalin?”towhich the poet responds with a subservient echo: “What else?” “The six great letters!”

248 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature