Edward Crabtree

SHAKERS AND MOVERS: -MURAKAMI LIVE AT 16 TONS, MOSCOW MAY 9TH.

All the way from Kazan, the altpop-rockers put on a show that packs punch.

Ninth of May – Victory Day in Russia – turned out a monochrome soaked Sunday with the television showing rows of stony-faced veterans with plastic warerproofs over their medalled uniforms as they listened to Putin pontificating about Chechnya.

Victory Day has long since devolved from being a commermoration of those Allies who died fighting the Nazix and turned into a sabre rattling spectacle. I was quite happy to take in a sideshow away from the fireworks.

I had first got to know of MURAKAMI only about a week earlier when I bought a Russian rock compilation CD which had a song of theirs – `Nash Strakh`. This track put many of the others in the shade with its ebullience and confidence of execution. Doing a subsequent internet search on the outfit, however, lead me to wonder if they might be a corporate pop-band in the making along the lines of A-STUDIO.

All the same when I discovered a coincidental arrival of them to Moscow the following weekend, there was soon a ticket with my name on.

Meeting of talents.

Their frontwoman, Dilyara Vagapova, the 35 year old mother of two from Kazan who as well as being a songstress also plays the guitar and composes film music, first got her name up in lights by appearing on a TV show called `People’s Artist` on RTR. This prompted the string and drum quartet `Soltse Ekran` (`Sun Screen`),also Kazan based, to invite her to become a part of their already up-and-running rock troupe.

MUEAKAMI: Teetring on the brink of corporate pop? [VKontakte]

MURAKAMI – yes, they are named after the cult Japanese author Haruki Murakami -came together in the winter of 2004 in the capital of the semi-autonomous Republic of Tartastan – Kazan. They have been offering a workable synergy of alt rock and pop ever since then.The café-bar 16 Tons – `Tonny` -has hosted MURAKAMI a few times before and the venue represents a more natural home for them than it did BRIGADNI PODRYAD.

The smart set.

The place has a reputation for being a decent microbrewery and I make the acquaintance of their light ale Zolotaya Leiba as undistinguished pop-funk plays through the speakers and the fans assemble.

They are not the leather jacket and combat trousers brigade. Bright t-shirts and pressed light blue jeans seem the order of the day.Lipstick lesbian couples, modelesque lone girls entranced by their phones, gaggles of plump women accompanied by chunky bald men, a lovey-dovey young couple and a puzzled American expat in the tow of a fashionista lady – they all 200 or so of them- bring with them a sense of expectation as well as the newly warm evening air.

Then at around 7:30, half an hour after the advertised starting time the `16 Tons` themes song is played (some godawful American blues ditty from the fifities) and this signals the arrival of the main attraction.

The band tease us with an instrumental interlude before Vagapora bursts onto the stage and opens with an unexpected sombre number which feels quite intense. Then she rips off the hat she has been wearing and launches into the crowd-pleasing `Kilometer` while swinging her hair around.

Rail Laptov, the rhythm guitarist and backing singer and Anton Kudryashov, the chunky keyboardist in shades both fight the impression that they are but session musicians. Artur Karimov, however, plucks at his base whilst skulking in the background somewhat and the percussion king Andrey Pugachev taps his drums with all the engagement of a doctor performing a minor operation.

Strong presence.

The commanding and sometimes coquettish presence of Vagapova forms the focus of it all. Her clear and penetrating vocal reach is only one of her assets. She empowers the music with great use of her hands and body movements. In her ability to take the audience with her I am reminded quite a lot of JULIA VOLKOVA.

The act is as well-rehearsed as it is sound engineered, yet there are quite a few raucous moments. In fact one of their numbers (as seems to be a requirement in law for Russian rock bands) a tribute to `Rock and roll`.

They enliven the show with some cabaret-like surprises too. Dilyara, all of a sudden, materialises behind the bar and delivers a slow number about soldiers (the one concession to the Day, perhaps).There is also a spoken monologue with a musical accompaniment and, just as the band had seemed to exit and we were getting ready to leave too, a melancholy unplugged piece (and one which seemed to put real tears into the eyes of Vagapora).

Not plastic.

I am left more stirred by this two hour event than I had expected.This is something a bit more than a manufactured and anodyne radio friendly colgate-smile sound. Both pain as well as pleasure get an airing here. It is all pumped out with a gutsy performance. The band’s poised ability to straddle the world of pop and at the same time delIver something serious puts me in mind of GOROD 312. There is even something of a potential Edith Piaf about Vagapora.

MURAKAMI have claimed in interviews that, despite the glare of the spotlight on them, they will not pack their bags and head out to the gated communities of Moscow like so many celebrities are expected to do. That is for the better. Russian cultural life is already way too Moscowcentric and the youthful and distinctive city of Kazan could do with an ambassador.

Murakami: remaining true to their roots in Kazan. [Murakamiband.ru]

WHAT A BLAST! A review of Tatyana Tolstaya’s `THE SLYNX`.

Tolsstaya’s sole novel is a science-fantasy farce about the destruction of Russia – and it has divided opinion since publication.

-Who is Pushkin? From around here?
-A genius. He died long ago.
-He ate something bad? (p-123)
Russia has had much to say in the way of anti-utopias, having more or less written the rulebook on them. The post-apocalyptic story – this sister subgenre, however – far less so. Where has there been a Russian or Soviet novel that can stand alongside Walter Miller Junior’s A Canticle for Leibowitz from the America of 1959?

This impasse came to be challenged in 1987 as the Soviet edifice began to wobble, when Ludmilla Petrushevskaya penned The New Robinson Crusoe: A Chronicle of the End of the Twentieth Century.
Published in Novy Mir, this short story explores the life of a family in an unspecified post-disaster scenario. Then it would be 15 years later when Dmitry Glukhovsky launched the Metro cycle – his account of the survivors of a nuclear war who have decamped to the Moscow subway – which has become a global pop culture phenomenon.

Sandwiched between these two portents however, came Russia’s true post-apocalyptic classic. Tatiana Nikitichna Tolstaya, Leo Tolstoy’s grandaughter, had become known for her short stories commenting on the perestrioka period. The Slynx (Kys) constituted something of a departure for her. Begun in 1986 and toiled over for 14 years whilst in Russia, Europe, Britain and America, this novel came to claim the Triumph prize in 2001 (a prize which had been set up a decade earlier to recognise outstanding contributions to Russian culture). It became the book to be seen with in the Russia of 2002.

THE SLYNX (KYS)is both a literary novel and a bestseller in Russia.[Pinterest].

Not all critics were convinced however. Dmitry Bykov was one of the naysayers, comparing the novel to a poor man's The Snail on the Slope ( referencing a novel by the Sturgatsky brothers).

It would be three years later when the late Jamey Gambrell would transmute into English the awkward colloquial Russianess of Tostaya’s prose as a New York Review book.

Clownland.
Tolstaya’s fantasia opens some two centuries hence, after an event spoken of as as the Blast (some sort of nuclear accident). This has laid waste to Moscow and nature, of sorts, has reclaimed the space. A new community of survivors has built a new town there -called Fyodor Kuzmichsk.
The townspeople are mutated in different ways (referred to as Consequences) and this fact creates the gross out texture of the proceedings.

Otherwise they are in a new Dark Ages: not religious, yet full of superstitious dread. Free-thinking, which is to say any kind of intellectual curiosity, is dicouraged with self-censorship.

Having only just invented the wheel, they assume the earth to be flat, have no mirrors and cannot make or sustain fire. They subsist in a feudal society regulated by the fearsome Saniturions who sledge their way round the town, wearing red hoods, on the look out for dissidence. The mainstay of the economy is mice – from which they make their food and clothing. Printed books from pre-Blast times – Oldenprint – are spurned as they are thought to give off radiation. The leader, however, transcribes poetry from the past and passes it off as his own work.

It is a topsy-turvy landscape in which rabbits dwell in trees and chickens can fly. The main beasts of burden are theDegenerators – unfortunate human-like (and articulate) four legged chimeras. The eponymous Slynx, meanwhile, (the Russian word – kys– suggests a jumble of different animals) is an invisible entity lying in wait in the surrounding forests and much feared bt Benedikt, the narrator.

One audacious twist appears in this not so unfamiliar freakshow. It is that there are some people – Oldeners – who have not only survived the Blast but have done so with a much prolonged lifespan. As refugees from the pre-apocalypse world, many try to restore a sense of cultural continuity by, for example, putting up signposts around with the name of old Moscow streets on them. For the reader, they provide a much needed foothold in things.

Benedikt, our cheery simpleton host, talks us through the do’s and don’ts of his milieu and through the unpredictable plot. He will marry above his station, gain a love of reading after being introduced to a stash of Oldenprint books and be lured into becoming an insurgent….

The dreamlike close of the novel is as puzzling as it is disappointing. Another enigma is the very title of the novel. What are we to read into the fact that this bogeyman has been highlighted in this way?

New take on an old genre.
Science fiction aficiocandoes will be reminded of Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (1980) and Engine Summer by John Crowley (1979).
There is more of a light touch to Tolstaya’s approach though. Indeed, some high comedy arises from the hero’s rustic ignorance. Here the Oldener, Nikita, hints at how to produce fire:
Nikita Ivanich said: -Think friction, young man. friction. Try it. I'd be happy to but I'm too old. I can't` Benedikt said:–Oh, come on now, Nikita Ivanich. You talk about how old you are, but there you go being bawdy again. (p-128).

We also have the Comedy of Revulsion – as Benedikt details people’s Consequences and unappetising eating habits in a gleeful manner.
However, it is Tolstaya’s embrace of folkloric elements which distinguishes it from other post-apocalyptic novels. Those expecting Naturalism are instead obliged to take the story on a more metaphorical level.

Gambrell deserves credit for conveying the linguistic oddness of the novel with its corrupted syntax (feelosophy deportmunt store and so on).The chapter headings are old Russian alphabet letters and words that begin with these. (Like Clockwork Orange, The Slynx could function as a primer on the Russian language – as well as Russian poetry, much of which is dispersed throughpout the novel).

Informed by Chernobyl, The Slynx does contain a cautionary aspect to it as well as a Ray Bradbury-like concern with cultural amnesia (which may well be a reflection on it having been written in early post-Soviet times). Printed books seem to safeguard against this. As Benedikt proclaims:
You, book! You are the only one who won't deceive, won't insult, won't abandon....(p-204).

Some other sequences draw parallels with our own times, and by no means only in Russia. Following their coup d’etat Benedikt and his father-in-law discuss freedom of ass ocean. After deciding that no more than three can gather Benedikt raises a point:
And what if there are six people in a family? Or seven?
Father-in law spat:...let them fill in a form and get permission (p-278).

Glukhovsky and Tolstaya are not often mentioned in the same breath but I did feel a real sense of kinship between the Metro series and The Slynx. Tolstaya’s novel could almost co-exist in the same universe as Glukhovsky’s, by offering the story of those who survived in overland Moscow.

Tolsyaya: the one time Bright Young Thing of Gorbachev’s Russia.

All quotations are from: Tolstaya Tatyana The Slynx (New York: New York Review Books, 2003). Translated by Jamey Gambrell.

The lead image:infourok.ru

OURS SINCERELY: LUMEN LIVE AT THE GLAV CLUB IN MOSCOW, 26TH MARCH.

Live rock is back – and with it LUMEN, an unpretentious quartet revisiting the songs that made them Russia’s favourite alt-rock exponents.

Lumen: (i) A unit for measuring the amount of light an object radiates.

Lumen: (ii) A prominent Russian alt-rock band who have been on the scene for 23 years..

About this time last year, with the Big Stop looming,I decided to forego the few live gigs still on offer then. Little did I realise at that time that it would be a whole year later before I would be gracing darkened halls full of people younger than myself and observing amplified performances.

Can I even remember how to do it?

Back in harness.

Getting back to the fray bought back all the tatty rawness of gig going that
I so love to hate.

The huddled gangs getting tanked up in the queue as you wait to enter…the general getting jostled about…the overpriced headache inducing Budweiser in plastic glasses…the pre-gig excited whoops as a roadie comes on stage to fiddle with a detail of the set…the trying not to spill your beer as you attempt to get some passable shots of the band with your unfit for purpose camera…all of that.

Alt-rock success story.

LUMEN – a four piece string and drum outfit -constitute a product of Ufa in Bakshortostan (in fact, they have written at least one song in the Bashkiri language). It tells you a lot that the band can boast an exact birthday: 12th February 1998, the fateful day when they became LUMEN and embarked on writng their own material.

LUMEN eschew genre labels and their music does elude them to some extent. They do not represent any kind of Metal, Nu or otherwise and seem too well-mannered and reflective to qualify as` punks`.` Alt-rock` seems the safest fit for what they do. Their nearest peers might be STIGMATA, except minus the grandiloquent Gothic trappings of that act, or PILOT yet lacking the evergetic inventiveness of those St Petersburgians.

They have gifted Russia and Eastern Europe with some nine recordings. Their name is fated, however, to be bound up with a piece entitled Sid and Nancy – a ballad extolling bonding through shared alienation which name-checks the punk celebrities in doing so. This summoned up a cult status amongst the nadstats of 2003 on receiving radio exposure.

LUMEN followed this hit with a reputation-cementing 18 track album called (in Russian) No Preservatives. Here was a band in the KINO tradition, taking a no-frills approach and telling it like it is.(Indeed, anti-government and ant-war anthems form a part of their repertoire. So far though, they seemed to have escaped the kind of attention from the higher-ups that have dogged the carees of LOUNA and IC3PEAK).

It is this very album that the concerts at Glav Club on 24th and 25th of March were staged in honour of. For two nights running – Friday and Saturday LUMEN were to revisit those compositions again as an 18 year anniversary.

Real people.

The two thousand or so punters who show up on this early spring evening – plus three degrees already! -appear an unspectacular lot, all grey and black khaki and t-shirts and anything between twenty and thirty years of age.

Among them are some true fans: I espy people at the front holding up some illuminated signs of the band’s birthday at the front of the pit.

Otherwise, I sense that we are all here to check out each other. This is always the case with such rock events but, this year, the hunger is even greater.(Indeed, at the end of the show many show a marked reluctance to leave and even crash out on the floor in small groups).

It’s about the music.

LUMEN saunter onto the stage without any theatrical preamble, soI am at the bar when it happens, trying to get the barman’s attention. Donned in tight jeans and their own promotional t-shirts, they could be members of their own audience.

The lynx-lean lead vocalist Rustem Bulatov.for all his lack of preservatives, does not look his forty-years of age although his chunkier colleagues do just a tad more.

I am more familiar with the band’s more recent anthemic material but what they play tonight seems to be a kind of power-pop which most in the audience know well enough to to sing along to. Sid and Nancy, however, is taken out for a walk.

With his earnest image,I do not expect Bulatov to be so garrulous. In between pieces he addresses us all as though he knows us, but with a casual and respectful air. What has most impact on me though, is Igor Mamaev’s lead guitar. He delivers quasi-classical sequences of soaring melody which have me closing my eyes in zoned out relish.

It is all about the music. The band have no recourse to video projections, or such special effects, but just use alternating red and blue lights for the most part. There are only a few balloons, The rhythm king – Denis Shakhanov – does not lob his sticks into the crowd and nor are there multiple encores or a selfie taken with the crowd.

A proper picure of the band – taken by a proper photographer. [metalking.org]

Isolation begone.

When the two hour set comes to a close and the masses chant `mol-od-yets` (`well done`) Bulatov, in a gesture of honest humility bows with his palms pressed together.

It all feels like a note in the margins of the post-pandemic situation. Yes, we are ordered to mask up on the way in to the venue. Yes, the bartenders insist on us wearing masks when we order (as is right and fair). Otherwise the masks are off and the band do not even reference the pandemic. It is like 2019 again – and a worthy beginning to a new season of live music in Moscow.

Soul versus market.

LUMEN offer a kind of heartfelt desire to share. They offer `sincerity`. This commodity may have been a bit out of vogue in the West for some time but many roubles could be put on `sincerity` making a rapid come back.

The Welsh rock combo THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS are what LUMEN remind me of a little. Here we have decent young men cocking a snook at the acknowledged grim realities of contemporary life for all too many of us.

But the burning question this raises is as old as the hills. Can LUMEN’s `sincerity` hold up when they are, for example, flogging LUMEN themed money belts, or producing arty-crafty videos to showcase their latest slow moving ballads – and staging nostalgic retrospectives like this one? They are, after all a well-established act who have reached, as they say, `the pinnacle of their career`.

THE PEOPLE’S MAGIC: The newspaper ANOMALNI NOVOSTI.

A regular colour newspaper uncovering the world of the strange and the esoteric still lining the shelves of the kiosks of Russia NOW.

`Why do you bother with lame stuff like that?` asked a Russian friend on being asked to translate something. Another acquaintance, a yeti hunter, was just as unimpressed.

`If there’s any news of the Russian yeti in there it is lost in all the other nonsense.` he opined.

Nevertheless there was an occasion, when I was squinting at one edition on the metro, and I was the subject of long and respectful looks from a nearby woman. It was ANOMALNI NOVOSTI that did it.

Beacon for the fringe.

ANOMALNI NOVOSTI – `Anomalous News` – constitutes one of the progenies of the Russia of the Nineties.

In the atmosphere of glasnost, when the Marxist-Leninist framework that had held good for a generation was being phased out, a subculture centred round interest in the paranormal was one of the forbidden fruits that the new press freedoms gave the green light to. The flabbergasting accounts that issued from the city of Voronezh in the winter of 1989 were one early manifestation of this.

ANOMALNI NOVOSTI began circulation in 1997. In an age when internet use was much less common than it is now, its readership must have felt like members of a special club. Perhaps it still does: ANOMALNI NOVOSTI remains an ink and paper product (much in the same way as Private Eye is in the U.K).

S.Media churns out this full colour illustrated 36 page newspaper twice a month in St Petersburg. It is then sold in kiosks, train stations, post offices and some supermarkets or delivered by subscription. The format of the paper with its fairground graphics and subtitled articles and – now- with a glossy A4 design – belongs to the `yellow press` (the Russian term for tabloid).

Within its pages you can find original articles about the latest UFO sightings or hauntings or kooky science developments. As their website puts it:

`Aliens and UFOs, poltergeists and teleportation, the world of spirits and ghosts, time travel and the most incredible scientific discoveries. All of the most mysterious and fantastic.`

Dom Ankor, the publishers, are also responsible for other reading matter with similar sensational slants. Some of their other titles include: Stars and Law, Forbidden History and Historical Truth of the USSR.

A Denis Lobkov works as one of the main staff writers. He is the author of such works as `The Magic and Power of Trees` (2013) and the headlines of his pieces are along the lines of `My husband was taken from a forest to another planet`.

Dmitry Sokholov is the paper’s resident UFO expert though, boasting his own page called `All the Secrets of UFOs`. (`Black UFO Attacks the Moon`, `South America: Portal for UFOs`) Such stories do tend to take the front page, but wider interests are catered for within.

Some running features include a section called Paranormal Chronicles, a page on Runes and one on Magical Amulets and Talismans (Sylvester Stallone, we learn, wears one of a dolphin’s flippers). The paper does involve a dash of humour now and then – as shown in a piece on the Ig-Nobel prize, for example.

Each issue carries a celebrity interview in whiuch a Russian star confesses to some experience hinting at paranormal revelation or a belief in some such thing. Thus Basta – a rapper and co-owner of the music label Gazgolder – tells us that : `I believe in karma and life after death`.

Then we have the photography competition in which readers send in their snapshots of unaccountable things in the sky, in windows or the woodlands. This week Yulia Fovlova from Vladivostok has captured an image of a spectral human-like thing lurking in a copse.

There is an advice column too – the confidante being a self-styled `Witch` called Irina. Last but not least, of course, there is in all of this a horoscope (a fact which they have, of late, taken to advertising on the masthead).

Blood-and-thunder entertainment…but rooted in some factual content [UFO-info-contact org.]

With its sensationalism ANOMALNI NOVOSTI does have some things in common with something like The Old Moore’s Almanac (they did sell amulets through the post at one time) and The Sunday Sport (except their stories do check out and are not just fabrications) on the one hand and, with its mix of free enquiry and mysticism, with more reputable publications like The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time and Fortean Times on the other.

They do not indulge such obvious anti-scientific silliness such as belief in a flat earth nor do they pander to the darker kind of conspiracy theories with their antisemitic overtones. In fact, we could call many of their column inches educational. The latest issue, for instance devotes a two page spread devoted to the lives of otters.

Some of the lower key stories are quite fresh and are intriguing enough to prove that the paper does have some value. One such story is worth relating at length:

The Ghost of Elzie Lurks in a Castle.

It begins in the early Twentieth Century in Southern Russia when a young couple – the Gusakovs – bought a dream home in Emmanuel Park in Pyatigorsk (a tourist destination known for its health giving waters). The husband was the successful owner of a coffee shop and confectioner and together with his wife seemed to live a charmed life.

Then, however, they were told by a doctor that Elzie (the wife) would never be able to bear a child. Her husband reacted by abandoning her for another woman – but not before allowing her to keep and stay in the charming old building.

Later, following the revolution, Elzie disappeared. It was rumoured that she had been killed by Bolsheviks and her body entombed somewhere in the building itself.

The building, now turned into a state run hostel, came to be inhabited by the sculptress Irina Shahovskaya and it is she who claimed to have made contact with the ghost of Elzie.

To this day passers-by still see the phantom of Elzie at the window, as visible from the nearby Lermontov street….

The Punters.

Strange to say, I have never yet caught anyone in the act of reading ANOMALNI NOVOSTI – not on the metro or waiting for trains or anywhere. Yet it boasts a circulation of 180, 000. So somebody is laying down their thirty of forty roubles for it and clasping it to their breasts. A website aimed at potential advertisers called Fenix Media.com sheds some statistical light on who these people might be.

Just a few more women – at 53 per cent – are consumers, as compared to 47 per cent men. The majority of these are either between 35 and 44 years of age (at 36 per cent) or 45 to 54 at the same percentage. In term of profession, the clearest constituency is divided into those working whilst studying (35 per cent) and people with a higher education and at work at the same percentage. There are no great surprises here.

Companion.

For the last ten years or so, whenever I have stumbled on a kiosk that happens to sell ANOMALNI NOVOSTI, I have made a point of returning there for their wares. This green, blue and red companion has given me something to look forward to each month. The first Russian article that I managed to read and understand was one of theirs.

The kiosks of Russian towns and cities continue to flog a wide array of popular newspapers

Arthur C.Clarke – no stranger to a spot of zany speculation himself – once said of such journalism that it should carry an Intellectual Health Warning on it to parallel the kind that appears about the contents of comestbles on food packages.

Perhaps so, and perhaps ANOMALNI NOVOSTI is just a purveyor of what Russians call `pink dreams`. Even so, what it does not purvey is the kind of salaciousness, consumerism and mass media trivia that you get so much of elsewhere. Also, in a world where there seems to have been a mass exodus into cyberspace, ANOMALNI NOVOSTI hangs on in there as an ink and paper artefact. As such, it is able to offer paid publishing opportunities to new writers.

LOVE PANGS IN A GLASS FORTRESS: `WE` BY YEVGENY ZAMYATIN RECONSIDERED.

Ahead of the forthcoming film, I take a fresh look at this seminal science fiction anti-utopia – and the new relevance it has since gained.

I am a man and not a number.

Yet, my life is overuled by passcodes, passport numbers and national insurance numbers. I have sold my privacy to vast tech empires who decide what I want through algorithms. With me I carry a device which allows all my movements to be monitored…And whilst .I am not obliged to wear a uniform, I choose to dress in more or less the same way as everyone else….

This year marks the century after Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin’s novel WE was completed. No coincidence is it that the cultural event of this year is to be the big screen adaptation of this challenging fantasia. The timing, in terms of world events could not have been more auspicious.

WE was written when Zamyatin, a ship architect by trade living in St Petersburg, was 37. It received its first main publication in English in New York however in 1924 – the same year that Kafka’s The Trial also came out.

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884 – 1937) [Goodreads.com]

My own introduction to the book came back in the Eighties when I was discussing Nineteen Eighty Four with a doped up undergraduate. He informed me that Orwell had, like, stolen all his ideas from some Russian geezer.

This half-truth forms most people’s first brush with WE. If they then go on to read the novel itself they do so only to make comparisons with Orwell’s classic – or perhaps with Huxley’s Brave New World.

Orwells’s debt to Zamyatin is a matter of record: Orwell reviewed the novel in Tribune (4th January, 1946). Huxley has never acknowledged the same influence, but Orwell (in that piece) felt it existed.

In any case, whilst it is by no means true to call WE `the first dystopian novel` it is, for sure, one that laid down the blueprint for many which came to follow. (My version, the Vintage imprint, is introduced by Will Self. This well-read bibliophile admits to not having read the novel before he did so to review it, and he read it on the Hebridean island where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four).

Zamyatin penned much else in different genres. If he is only known for WE then this is because is is this work that prompted the just installed Bolshevik apparatchiks to enusure that it never saw print in the Soviet Union. Zamyatin’s response – to get it printed on foreign soil -set the trend for many dissident scribes that followed him.

Better late than never: A Russian imprint of WE [goodreads.com]

It is time to excavate this novel from all of its associations with better known writings and also from its political backstory and try and encounter it afresh.

Everything is awesome.

We are in the far future. The One State, presided over by the ever watchful Great Benefactor, is the only collection of humans to have survived the Two Hundred Year’s War which has shattered urban society. They now live protected from individual freedom in a city composed of glass buildings. Around this is a `Green Wall` which quarantines them from the savagery of the natural world. Their daily activities are circumscribed by a Taylorist style `Table of Hours`. They have been assigned numbers instead of names and all wear a uniform.

`WE` established the archetype of the quintessential industrial-technocratic anti-utopia.[pinterest.com]

A spaceship engineer called D-503 keeps a journal and it is these first person present tense reflections that make up this novel. He is helping to build the Integral – a spaccraft that has the purpose of exporting the values of this society to other worlds. The narrator is foursquare behind this:

`Indeed is there a place where happiness is wiser, more cloudless than this miracle world?…nothing is happier than digits living according to the well-constructed, eternal laws of the multiplication table` (p-59).

However he comes to obsess over an unusual young woman (serial dating is encouraged by a voucher system which would put Tinder to shame). It turns out that she is an opponent of the regime. His attraction to her has distinct sadomasochistic overtones:

`And suddenly she burst out laughing. I could see this laughter with my eyes: the ringing, sever, stubbornly supple (like a whip), crooked line of this laughter`. (p-27)

D503’s inner struggle between his conventional loyalty to the One State and primal lust for this woman – I-330- drives the narrative to its tragic foregone conclusion.

The premise, then has since become so embedded that you will have encountered it in popular film culture in such films as Metropolis (1927), Sleeper (1973), Rollerball (1975), Demolition Man (1993) and Equilibrium (2002), to name but a few.

Russian S.F from the Twenties.

WE comprises a novel that belongs to the Nineteen Twenties just as surely as, say, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. It is drenched with all the concerns of that decade: new machineries, female emancipation, modernism and a sense of despair at the future of humanity.

Also WE is far more of a generic science-fiction story than Orwell’s much more down-to-earth and more topical extraction of it.

It also must not be forgotten that is a part of Russian literature. It contains echoes of Dostoevsky here and there, as well as references to Pushkin. The polished style partakes of the avant garde ferment which enriched Russia at that time. (In fact, it is this latter aspect of the novel – its difficult prose – which has done much to discourage people from giving WE more attention).

More than an anti-Soviet diatribe.

It seems simplistic to view this Twenty Sixth Century world as being a comment on the Soviet Union. Yes, some aspects of `Stalinism` were anticipated with accuracy by Zamyatin: the use of Secret Police as spies (`The Guardians`) and The Day of One Vote, for example. Much else is more about technocracy than State Socialism, however.

Like Bulgakov, Zamyatin was labouring under the long shadow cast by H.G.Wells, with his antiseptic messianism. The society of One State, a kind of Rationalist Utilitarian one, resembles Gene Roddenberry’s Vulcans as much as anything:

`Take two trays of a weighing scale: you put a grain on one, and on the other put a ton. On one side the `I` and on the other is the `we`, the One state…Assuming that `I` has the same `rights` compared to the State is exactly the same thing as assuming that a grain can counterbalance a tone` (p-102).

Then against the psychology of this totalitarianism Zamyatin juxtaposes a primitive sexual infatuation – in its way just as deranged.

New resonances.

I have read WE about four times during the last decade, and in different translations. Clarence Brown (1993) then Mira Ginsburg(1983) and now the London based American Natasha Randall ((2006) Her variant seems to work best for me, although I would be hard pressed to explain why.

Getting past the Expressionist style of narration we find a novel that delivers a science fictional kick. There is a death ray that turns people to liquid, a Bell Jar used as a torture device,diaphanous listening gadgets lining the streets, robot tutors and a space craft that gets given a test flight.

On top of all that the world of WE has never seemes less implausible. Post-Covid, Zoom and so on have become all pervasive – with the result that we all indeed live in glass compartments, in effect, and the police have been granted unpresedented powers to direct people’s private lives.

Anticipations.

So I really hope that Hamlet Dulyan’s cinema adaptation will be more on the edgy side than precious. That is to say that it should not treat the tale as some sort of signed and sealed `period piece`, still less some kind of retrospective on the Soviet years.

I hope that the director has not been too `highbrow` has remembered that WE functions above all as a science-fiction yarn. Furthermore he needs to have brought out the eroticism of it all,

We shall see.

All translations are from: Zamyatin, Yevgeny WE. Translated by Natasha Randall. (London: Vintage, 2007).

The lead image is from: atomsand archetypes.wordpress.com

2020: WHEN THE KISSING HAD TO STOP.

`Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel` – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.

In wishing you and the other guy that reads this All the Best for Etcetera, let us revisit some of the more promising signposts in sight and sound that were served up in these last leaden twelve months.

I opened last year with a write-up of the film Invasion and in this opined:what a roaring way to welcome in the Roaring Twenties!
Alas, it seems that we are not so much in the Roaring Twenties as the Rasping Twenties!

Aspects of this – the Zoom pandemic year – were presaged by the grim military fantasy Avanpost from 2019 with its quarantine zones, mass infections and blackouts but even more so by the television series Epidemia (from the same year) – starring The Sniffer’s Kirril Karo – which was serialised on Netflix with subtitles earlier this year.

There have been some small mercies. The Mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin only visited one Big Stop on us all (between late March and early July). There have been no more since then.

So – I never thought I’d say this -but a Big Thank You to Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin for not being a fanatic for Big Stops! He may have put an end to Gay Parades in Moscow, but he hasn’t put an end to the gay parade that is Moscow life itself.

The main casualty of Rasping Twenties so far has been the ability to join a crowd and see rock/pop artists perform in front of you in darkened halls. Even the venues for this are being decimated: Glav Green Club is limping along but Red Club is an empty property and Mumy Troll Music Bar is likewise hollowed out.

(The same is true for pivbars. Kamchatka – the street mecca of central Moscow – closed its doors forevermore last December in order to be replaced by yet another Adidas retail department. The Kruzhka chain is still around though).

I did however manage to turn up to see the theatrical cosmic rock act Sunwalter. They were playing alongside fellow nu-metal exponents like Blackthorn in an event styling itself Metal Against Corona at Live Stars on 2nd October – just before further restrictions would have made such an event impossible again.

The cinematic breakthrough of the year has to be Sputnik. Premiering online last April during the Big Stop, it made it into the cimemas in August and has been welcomed with a string of appreciative comments by Western European and North American cineasts.

Let us hope that its vaccine namesake Sputnik V proves to be every bit of a success!

(By the way, if you like scary Russian movies then join me on my Facebook page Russian Horror is Cool. This gets more hits than this here blog, which is damned annoying!)

Although I have yet to review it The Man From Podolsk must constitute the other significant film of this year. A Harold Pinteresque absurdist take on culture rifts in contemporary Russia, it reminds us that literate and awkward films can still make it in the current environment. It is the Zerograd (1989) of our time.

As for the popular novel, I was a latecomer to the Labyrinths of Echo series. This is not my genre and I will not be thumbing through the whole series, but fans of Fantasy should make the acquaintance of Max Frei. Apart from anything else, his sense of fun is so contrary to our times.

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GENERATION P: alone in uncovering significant cultural signposts from the Other Russia and subjecting them to the critical gaze of a Western European.

Do stay onboard for this quirky but important guided tour!

FOR MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND CO-OPERATION BETWEEN NATIONS IN 2O21!

THE LEAGUE OF JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS: MAX FREI’S `THE STRANGER’S WOES` – BOOK TWO OF `THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO` REVIEWED.

This distinctive alternate world makes Romanticism Great again.

When I chanced on the paperback of THE STRANGERS WOES (BOOK TWO OF THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO) I knew that this was something which I had to devote some column inches to. Even so my pulse was not quickened: this brand of unadulterated fantasy involving magicians and their spells ranks alongside War and Historical Romance as amongst my least liked genre.

Eye opener.
Cracking it open on the metro home, I experienced moutning surprise. Here was a novel altogether different from the Lukyanenko’s Nightwatch tribute that I had been expecting. In fact, it is even poles apart from the hard-boiled nature of much Russian popular fiction.

A winner.
A multi-million seller in Russian speaking countries, the Max Frie series comprises some twenty-four books now, with but four of them out in English courtesy of the London based publishers Gollancz.
Critics tend to pigeonhole the series as being Urban fantasy but I find this label a tad misleading. For me they belong to the Magical Land subgenre, albeit laced with the detective genre and with a lot of humour poured into the mix.

Max Frei is both the protagonist of the stories and the author of them. It is the pen name of Svetlana Martynchuk, a 54 year old Odessa born Ukranian who has spent some time in Moscow and has since settled in Villinus.Her artist partner Igor Steopin developed the premise of the series and has collaborated with her on some of the writing.

The Labyrinths of Echo cycle came into being in 1996, lasting until 2003. Then Martynchuk breathed new life into the much loved franchise in 2014 with an update on it known as Dreams of Echo.

The series is of huge popularity in the Russian speaking world. [apriltime.ru]

English speeaking monolinguals, though, have only been able to buy these books for the last eleven years. The translators, from an American agency called Gannon & Moore, have also rendered the rather more weighty works of Ludmilla Ulitskaya into English. Polly Gannon boasts a doctorate in Russian literature from Cornell University and Ast. A. Moore, the assistant editor, comes from a more technical background.

What makes this series worth looking at, even if you are no devotee of Fantasy, is how it shows what kind of appetite exists among the Russsian book reading public.

Loser redeemed.
Frei, an Everyman Hero if ever there was one, begins as a twenty-something nobody who likes food, drink and the odd cigarette – in our world, that is. However, when he dreams his way into the alternate world of the City of Echo he becomes both respected and feared as a part of the elite Secret Investigative Force. (As exposition is kept to the minimum, I recommend that you start this series from Book One. I have had to piece together backstory as I was going along).

You see…a long tiime ago there had been a cataclysmic conflict between waring magic orders. This had depleted the very World’s Heart and had almost lead to the destruction of the world itself. So now the use of magic has been forbidden. The City of Echo resides at the world’s Heart and here a Secret Police force is at work to ensure there is no recurrence of the dark days of the past….

The long-lived inhabitants of the low-tech world use luminous mushrooms as indoor lighting, have giant domestic cats, use several baths as a part of their morning routine, frequent numerous taverns and can contact each other via Silent Speech, a type of telepathy.

Max Frei, under the tutelage of the avuncular Sir Juffin Hully, the director of the Secret Police and alonsgside such colleagues as Lonli-Loki and the glamorous Lady Melamori, learns about his own latent magical abilities. These he is able to use in the just fight against those using magic for the wrong villainous reasons. He becomes Sir Max.

Within the pages of Book Two Sir Max will hunt down a criminal returned from the dead in the outlands of the city, become an ambassador to a distant tribe of desert people, and deal with an apparent zombie attack .

Dialogue heavy.
It is its style and not the not-so-original plot which makes this book so noteworthy though. Book Two contains three big chapters which are divided into sections and is 412 pages in length. Much of what transpires is dialogue in the form of merry banter between colleagues. The most elementary rule of commercial fiction – to boil everything down and keep the pace going – is broken. Here is a more or less random quotation:

Max, the lives of all the policemen of Echo are in your hands.
Smiling Melifaro made himself comfortable atop my desk, knocking the self-scribing tablets on the floor and an empty cup in my lap. Melifaro didn’t even blink. Instead, he hung over me, wringing his hands theatrically and demanding attention.
Ever since Boboota ran out of those funny smelling sticks you gave him, his temper is even worse than it used to be.
Impossible, I said in a calm voice. It can;t get any worse than it was. Nature's resources are not limitless. The boys simply forgot what their boss used to be like before he stuffed himself on King Banjee. Now he's completely recovered, that's all.
So you don't hae any more of those smoking sticks? said Melifaro. Poor Apurra.
No I don't have any at the moment, but I can fetch some more. No problem. Who's Apurra?
Right, you haven't met him yet. Lieutenant Apurra Blookey. He's been with the police since Shixola died. As smart as the late Shixola, and almost as nice. You'll like him. Oh, and there's a new dame in the city police, Lady Kekk Tuotli....
(From page 137)

It feels spirited and affectionate with an exuberance that becomes infectious even as you flag a bit with ploughing through pages and pages of this stuff. You can appreciate the humorous tone even if it does not leave you teary eyed with laughter.

Some have made comparisons with Harry Potter insofar as this seems like a classic wish fulfilment saga, others with the more sophisticated Jasper Fforde and other critics even with Oscar Wilde. For myself I was reminded a bit of some of J. P Donleavy at times. None of these capture the uniqueness of Martynchuk’s writing though.
Grumble sheet.

Online commentators have carped at the quality of the translation. I am in no position to comment much on this but I did notice some lame Americanisms.

We meet the phrase Stop making fun of me a few times. A more real-world approximation of this would be Gimme a break will ya or, if you want to be more British Stop taking the piss. Likewise the exclamation gosh is uttered in many situations – sometimes in extremis !

Just as common is the complaint that the Max Frei protagonist is nothing but a Mary (or Marty) Sue type of character. That is to say he functions as a flawless over-idealised projection of the authors. Whilst this may be so, Sir Max gets portrayed as a man full of gratitude for the wonderful world he resides in and this fact makes him forgiving and unassuming. Such a hero is difficult to dislike, even if he is a phoney.

An example of the copious amounts of fan art that the Max Frei series has generated [403 Forbidden Illustration]

Modern romance.
This is 100 carat escapist pulp fiction which can appeal to both adults and teenagers alike. The charm of it is the unfashionable romanticism at work behind it all. Is there a message in it too though?
It is difficult to ignore the trademark of the series – which is its eat-drink-and-be-merry hedonistic ethos. Right now this feels like a cheeky slap in the face to the lights-out-by-ten shibboleth which is all around us.

Romance isn’t dead in the world of Echo – more fan art [inpinterest.com]

Frei, Max THE STRANGER’S WOES: THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO:BOOK TWO (London:Gollancz, 2011) Translated by Polly Gannon and Ast. A. Moore.
(All quotations are from this text.)

Main image: tr.pinterst.com

`SHERLOCK IN RUSSIA`: HOLMES FINDS HIS HEART IN SAINT PETERSBURG.

IN THIS AMBITIOUS BUT PREDICTABLE DARK FANTASY SERIES THE WORLD’S BEST KNOWN SLEUTH IS ON THE TRAIL OF THE RIPPER IN RUSSIA’S CULTURAL CAPITAL. BUT, WAIT…ARE THOSE TEARS?

Embrace the chaos, Mr Holmes!

One thing that enlivened a dull pandemic was the fact that some people were doling out free face masks in some metro stations in Moscow. These promotionals were swish black items featuring the legend Sherlock v Rossi – Sherlock in Russia.

Sherlock in Russia AKA Sherlock: the Russian Chronicles represents the latest uncalled for addition to the overstretched Sherlock Holmes smorgasbord. This 18+ period-mystery-action show reached Russia on October 6th this year as part of the Moscow International Film Festival. Then it would infect a wider audience through being offered as a weekly subscription by START Video Service. The series was shown every Thursday in 52 minute long episodes until December 3rd.

Millenial iconoclasm.
It has been open season on the august occupant of 221b Baker Street since the turn of the millenium if not before. The Soviet Union, despite seeming to be steadfast in opposition to Western imperialism and so on, did at least distinguish itself with its fidelity to the Arthur Conan-Doyle scripture. The television series filmed by Lenfilm and running from 1979 to 1986 called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is viewed by many afiocandos of the cult fiction to be among the Gold Standards.

The post-communist Russian Federation, however, has come out fighting with its own sacriligeous pop culture variants on the Sherlock mythos to match those of Britian and America.

Thus seven years back one Igor Petrenko embodied Sherlock Holmes in a television drama called just that (produced by Rossiya1 and Central Partnership). He seemed more like a poet than a detective the reviewer Kim Newman said of his portrayal (Wikipedia).

This fare, however, still held onto the apron strings of the traditional canon; Sherlock Holmes in Russia all but dispenses with it. In that regard, the clearest precedent for this would seem to be Guy Ritchie’s 2009 shameless make-over of the cerebral icon as the sort of youthful, dapper action hero that could be played by Robert Downey Junior (Sherlock Holmes, Warner Bros, 2009).

Illustrious names.
A 55 year old conceptual artist from Sverdlosk comprises one of the culprits for this show. A member of the infamous Blue Noses Art Group no less, Alexander Shaburov also penned a series entitled The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes between 1991 and 1992.
Then the prolific fifty year-old screen writer Oleg Malovichko – who worked on this year’s breakthrough film Sputnik among many other prominent releases – transmuted these sketches into something watcheable.

Then a bankable star to don the dear-stalker and hold the pipe was the only other thing that was needed. Step forward the 38 year-old Svetly born Maxim Matvyeev – who appeared in Stilyagi in 2008 and played Vronsky in a TV adaptation of Anna Karenina three years ago .

Artifice.
Despite being filmed on location in Saint Petersburg, the scenes exude an overall contrived appearance with a crepescular ochre-burnt orange shade to everything. The iconography reminded me of the look of Viktor Frankenstein, the British film from 2015.

Matvyeev’s Holmes could not be further from the classic late middle-aged sexually ambigous representation of him. This actor is a screen idol type in the Danila Kozlovsky mould. He plays him with a trimmed beard and a floppy fringe and demonstrating cuddly emotions. He even blows on his magnifying glass as though it were a smoking gun.

Other nods to our brave new world include jerky camera shots and, at one early point, a cretinous glitch in the matrix in the form of a snatch of music from Britney Spears’s Toxic ! (We can be grateful that the otherwise more appropriate sepulchural soundtrack is by Ryan Otter for most of the proceedings).

On the hunt for a legend.
The breakneck paced action opens in rain-soaked back alleys of East London. Somebody (who at least has the decency to wear a mask) is trawling the alleways with knife crime on his mind. He is closing in on a quarry, when:
Hello, Mr Ripper, allow me to introduce myself.... comes the opening line of You Know Who. Telegenic fisticuffs then ensue. Watson comes to the rescue but this results in him being put into a coma.
Distraught at his companion’s fate, Holmes nevertheless takes a steam train bound for Russia. He has deduced that the serial killer is from that land on account of the make of knife that he uses. Furthermore, the killer has been leaving taunting messages for Holmes written in blood on street walls.

New friends and enemies.
Holmes arrives in Saint Petersburg and takes up lodgings in Pekarskaya Street (this is a pun on Baker street – a pekarniya being a bakery in Russian). He mails missives back to London to update those at home and his letters are read out to the unconscious Watson as a kind of therapy (this narrative device is borrowed in part from The Hound of the Baskervilles).
His host consists of a hired medical assistant in the form of the hardboiled Doctor Kartsev (the 52 year old Muscovite Vladimir Mishukov) with whom he faces a rocky partnership.

The trope of Interference From Those in Authority is fulfilled by the Chief of Police Znamensky. This buffonish character regards Dostoevsky (who Holmes is well versed in) as over-rated and considers the work of the Ripper to be the handiwork of an ecaped gorilla. He regards the migrants deductive approach – presented here as a sort of savant’s mental tick over which Holmes has no control – as a lot of new fangled nonsense.
It is whilst on a fact-finding tour of the Saint Petersburg slums – bring a knife and a prayer Kartsev advises him -that he encounters the plot’s crucial love interest: Sophie, played by the inevitable Irina Starshenbaum.

Irina Starshenbaum provides the love interest [mirf.ru]

Russian self-reflection.

In a manner rare for a Russian product Sherlock in Russia does try to say something about Russian identity in relation to the rest of the world. It is the illiberal and very much autocratic Russia of Alexander the Third’s reign that Holmes steps into.( Some might draw paralells with today’s Russia).
As soon as Holmes emerges from the station at Saint Petersburg he treads on a cow pat. Later we learn that Kartsev harbours a particular suspicion of the British. His memory of his uncle being shot by by a British sniper in the Crimean war has seen to that.

Holmes, who has an improbable level of Russian fluency, has to learn some Russian idiomatic phrases. I'll smash myself into a pancake, for example is a promise to work very hard.
Znamensky, meanwhile does seem to embody a certain type of Russian provincial ignorance. He has to be told not to let his colleagues wash away the evidence from the scene of a crime, for example.

So…this Russia is a bit rustic, holds old grudges,is full of quaint phrases and inept in its handling of investigative policing. Later in the series Holmes will even utter the words: I don't understand Russia. It's terrible.

Holmes in love.
Matvyeev’s Holmes outstrips Downey Junior’s in being teary-eyed, soulful and in opening up to the ladies. This Holmes has a full on hetersosexual relationship, which may well be a first. He also suffers visionary flashbacks in the manner of the re-imagined Nikolai Gogol in the cinema-cum TV series Gogol, which may have been the model for this series.

That said, there is one traditional aspect of this drama and it is something which has lent a rare 18+ certificate and prevents it from going out on mainstream terrestrial Russian television. This is the dwelling on the gentleman sleuth’s addiction to cocaine. I doubt this fact will placate the international Sherlock Holmes community though.

Judging from the First Episode this series may be cheesy, but it is not bereft of intelligence. For me the most menmorable character was Doctor Kartsev. He was more Holmes than Holmes was in many ways.

The lead image: deneri.net.

SHERLOCK IN RUSSIA – First Episode with English subtitles:

SLACKER ON A SUBURBAN TRAIN: VENEDIKT YEROFEEV’S `MOSCOW STATIONS` REVIEWED.

Is this seedy and honest samizdat novel an expose of a wasted life or a comic masterpiece? Stephen Mulrine;s first rate translation helps us to decide.

You know it's weird, nobody in Russia knows how Pushkin died, but everyone knows how to distill varnish

One of the huge bugbears of social life in the towns and cities of Russia is the Sociable Drunk. Get together with a few acquaintances in a public area, maybe speak a little English and – kazam! -up pops the Sociable Drunk. He – it is most often a he – fastens onto you like a lamprey. He wants to shake your hand, to practise his Englsh and is brimming with theories and observations which he just has to tell you all about.
Well, the Sociable Drunk has his very own novel: Moscow Stations by Venedikt Yerofeev.

This novel began life in 1969 as a photocopied document which was passsed from hand to hand in the cities of Russia. It would be twenty years later that this cult product would receive official blessing – of sorts -by getting printed as a serial in a journal called Sobriety and Culture. Then it gatecrashed the Anglophone world after being transmuted into the English tongue by the talented Glaswegian translator Stephen Mulrine (whose death, at 82 in January of this year, is another loss to Russian-Western cultural exchange, to add to that of Jamey Gambrell). He adapted sections of the writing into a one man play (more of which later) and then translated it all for Faber & Faber in 1997.

The Faber & Faber Mdern Classics Edition. [Smart Shopper.ru]

Venedikt Yerofeev is not to be confused with Viktor Yerofeev! In fact, they are poles apart. Viktor Yerofeev is a modernist and a critic who writes with great coherence about social and cultural matters.Our Venedikt, however, is more a sort of Vodka soaked Dylan Thomas of Russian lower class urban life.

Born in 1938, he originated from the provincial far north, excelled at school, undertook some teacher training in Vladimir and then seems to have spent most of his days travelling from town to town doing odd jobs whilst in the grip of alchoholism.

Venedikt Yerofeev: Portrait of the Artist as a Drunken Young Man [Pinterest]

Like all too many men would do of subsequent generations, he died way too young at 51. His satirical drama Walpurgis Night was published after his death but his name remains synonymous with Moscow Stations.
This he dashed off in a few months whilst working as a layer of cables. He wrote with friends in mind (one of them would later recall seeing him chuckling over his first draft in a disused railway station).
The main interest a reader might have in this work now is in seeing whether it resonates with modern Russian life or whether it can be consigned to the shelf markedPeriod Piece from the Time of Stagnation.

Diary of a Heavy Drinker.
Moscow Stations comprises of a day in the life of young Venya (no doubt the author in a very thin disguise). His world consists of wandering through central Moscow as he downs Kuban vodka or Zubrovka or any other strong spirits or wine that he can afford and, to this end, he knows all about brand names and liquid volumes.

We discover him engaged on a Friday night ritual of boarding a train at Kursk station. He is destined for Petrushki, a high rise suburban district some 124 kilometeres East of Moscow, in a trip that would take around two and a half hours. (We are not talking Trans-Siberian express here!) His new girlfriend awaits him there as does his son, both of whom, in his inebriated state, he idolises.

This banal premise allows us to be privy to the protagonists internal monolgue as -in chapters named after the train station stops – he gets thrown out of a cafe for demanding non-available sherry, hooks up for some rambling intellectual banter with fellow Career Drinkers in the train carriage, has his baggage stolen, engages with hallucinatory dreams involving military glories and then wakes up returning to Moscow having passed out on the train overnight (that, at least is what we surmise has happened: it is not the sort of novel which lays things out for the reader). Needless to say, following all his musings over the pitiable details of his sordid life, he fails to disembark at Petushki.

Plain-speaking hobo.
The voice is book-learned and streetwise in the Henry Miller manner and the novel functions as a free-form romp. The first person past rense confessional, much of it a kind of stream-of-consciousness, ends up spiralling into chaos and ambiguity and with the execution of the narrator by shadowy assailants.

I was reminded of the peripatetic anti-hero of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger . In contrast, though, Venya’s issue is not one of material need, he belongs to a society of near full employment after all, it is how to score his next liquid fix and then to stave off the after-effects in the meantime:
...you should have seen me, holding my eyes shut tight for ages, trying to keep down the nausea, effing and blinding.... One minute the glass I'd drunk lay smoking somehwere between my belly and my gut, next minute it was shooting up and falling back down again (p-13).
(His warts and all expose of drinking’s downsides fails to mention the horrific absence of toilets on these suburban trains, however!)

The strenuousness of Mulrine’s rendition of Venya’s vernacular is nothing short of awe inspiring. He has reallyh brought to life for the English language reader something rooted in colloquial Russian:
So to hell with you! You can leave all that extragalactic astronomy to the Yanks, and the psychiatry to the Germans. Let all those Spanish bastards go watch their corridas, let those African shits build their Aswam dam, go ahead, the wind'll blow it down anyway, let Italy choke on its idiotic bel canto, what the hell! (P-44)
Moscow Stations does feel quite fresh for something with a 1969 vintage. In fact I can recognise possible tributes to it in later Russian novels: the intimate misfit’s voice in Arslan Khasavov’s Sense, for example or the madcap army games which Venya dreams up finding an equivalent in Dmitry Bykov’s Living Souls.
Yerofeev is sometimes dignified with the term dissident, but, from this novel alone, this label does not seem appropriate.Venya protests nothing – not the Brezhnev doctrine, or the growing tensions between Russia and China, nor the use of pschiatric institutions as political weapons. He even advocates pusillanimity which some might argue has since become the national vice. So does the novel have anything else to announce to today’s reader?

Unintended cautionary tale?
Some critics have imagined there to be a core religious significance to this work on account of the references to the Lord and to angels and matters spiritual in the text. However, these Christian name-checks are handled with the same kind of offhand facetiousness that every other intellectual subject is in this book.

Others just frame the novel as a good comic one. Indeed, there is a lot of playfulness in evidence throughout. The infamous recipes for cocktails, however – which itemise such ingredients as brake fluid and sock deoderant -would be easier to laugh with if they did not have a basis in fact. (A female acquaintance of Yerofeev’s recalls having to hide perfume bottles whenever he paid a visit). The best joke, for me appears right at the novel’s outset. Venya admits that he has never seen the Kremlin. Then: For instance. Yesterday - yessterday I didn't see it again (p-1) Much of the rest of the humour is a drunk’s humour – far funnier to the teller than to the listener.

The novel highlights the squalid horridness oif a life devoted to drink. Unlike J.P Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, for example, Yerofeev does not seek to glamourise such a life with shows of macho swagger. Thus I can see how this novel made its way into a journal like Sobriety and Culture, which was devoted to public health, and taken as a warning against drink abuse.

Redeemed by a staging.
The narrator of Moscow Stations, whilst full of wisdom beyond his thirty or so years, is one I find hard to get on with. Yes, he is gentle and betrays affection for his loved ones and erudite and vivacious; he is also supercilious and proud and full of self-pity, just as a raving dipsomaniac would be.

The dramatic monologue that Mulrine extracted from this novel was put on at the Traverse theatre in Edingburgh with Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar) in the role in 1994, to some acclaim, and then it toured.

Born in the same year as Yerofeev and bearing a physical resemblance to him, Courtenay was 57 when he performed this role – a more fitting age for the protaginist somehow. Indeed Venya is something like what Billy Liar’s Billy Fisher might have ended up as, if he had taken to the bottle in a big way. I have not seen the play, but I have an instinctive feeling that this format would have more impact that the novel itself.

YEROFEEV, VENEDIKT MOSCOW STATIONS (LONDON: FABER & FABER, 1997, 2016). All quotations are from this text.

Lead image: Yandex.ru

TWO CLASSIC RUSSIAN ROCK ALBUMS REVIEWED: KINO’S `Nachalnik Kamchatki` and NAUTILIUS POMPILIUS’S `Titanic`.

KINO, the braincild of the frontman Viktor Tsoi, emerged from the Leningrad scene in 1982 to become the prototypical Russian rock act with their brand of `beat music` until Tsoi’s tragic demise eight years later.

Nachalnik Kamchatki (`Head of Kamchatka`) forms Kino’s second release after `1946` and sees the light of day in 1984 on Moroz records. Andrei Tropillo produces it.

For all the bright colours of the album sleeve this is a downbeat affair, notable for the brevity of its tracks. My version features black and white shots of the band which could almost have come from the Nineteen Fifties.

The album opens on a strong, famous anthem: `Last hero` (`Posledniy Gero`). Here we get a repeated bass coda held up by a light beat as Tsoi sings in a fresh voice with a borderline angry tone. `Good morning, last hero` is the chorus line. There are no instrumental interludes on this otherwise instrument heavy album, but the song is interesting enough not to need them.

The piece which follows – `Every Night` (`Kazhdi Noch`) – betrays some influence of the two-tone ska music from the British West Midlands of the time. With its chugging rhythm and its horn backing melody it could almost be an early piece from The Specials. `I know – every night I live near the sea, I know -every night I listen to songs` goes the oft repeated chorus line.

`Tranquiliser` plays next. Also with a British Eighties sensibility, this has an upfront bass and a funereal metronomic pace propping up Tsoi’s spaced out vocals: `The weatherman says rain won’t be long` and the drawn out chorus `Oooooh, tranquliser`. This is all too effective in conveying a certain defeated lethargy, despite some pleasing guitar work.

The fourth composition feels quite forgettable. `Listen to the New Song` sounds a little manic with sixties style organ keyboards, a stuttering bass line and somewhat nagging vocals.

`Guest` (`Gost`) is next up. Once again we are treated to a sparse mix of heavy drums and bass relieved by the intervention of a bit of guitar later on. The lyrics build on the theme of despondency : `Drink tea, smole papyrosas/ Think of what to do tomorrow`.

`Kamchatka`, the next track, offers a solution: daydream. The title is Russian slang for an idealised place to escape to (like Eldorado). It is all prefigured with some exotic, blissed out rhythm guitar before the refrain` It’s a strange place Kamchatka/It’s a sweet word Kamchatka` gets rolled out.

The seventh piece `Aria Mister X` reprises the electric organ keyboards and marries a ponderous song with a speedy rhythm. A bit of an outtake this.

Iconic Soviet forerunners of Russian rock: Kino (Viktor Tsoi second from the left). [tipstop.ru]

`Trolleybus` on the other hand redeems the album with a serviceable pop song. With an ostensible focus on the vehicle of the title (`I don’t know why I’m cold in here`) the song brings in an upfront guitar riff and some soaring saxophone. With its more upbeat stance , `Trolleybus` is a preview of what Kino would later evolve into a few albums later.

Then `Slushy snow` (`Raspotitye sneg`) fades in with another mechanical beat this time overlaid with acid blues style guitars. Again the mood seems one of desperation. `Mother` cries Tsoi. Then: `Help me!`

`Rain for us` (Dozhd Dyela Vas`) comprises a slow ballad complete with jangly guitars and more of Igor Butman’s saxophone but fails to really distinguish itself.

`I Want to Drink with You` (`Hachoo Pitz s’ Tovoy`) is track number eleven and is a return to form. With its funky baseline and much saxophone this could, maybe with a little bit more production, have stood alongside `Trolleybus` as a standout piece.

`General`, up next, introduces a dub like echoing bass and some interesting violin instrumentation but it otherwise forgettable.

The final piece, which the band should placed nearer the front so good is it, is `Romantic Walk` (`Protulka Romantika`). Concerned with a nocturnal city stroll, the song is built around a fine bass line and builds up to a memorable chorus line.

Taking all the above into account, we have here a glum, minimalist, reverb-heavy album which, nevertheless features a wide range of musicianship. The lyrical focus is very much on the minutiae of daily life much in the way that (say) Tom Robinson’s Band was during the same era.This is a`stoner` soundtrack and is not for partying to; nor is it the best work of Kino, which would come later. What does shine through, though, is Tsoi’s songwriting prowess.

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Nautilus Pompilius emerged from Sverdlosk in the eighties , lead by the singer Vyacheslav Butusov with lyrics supplied by the poet Ilya Kormitsev, they promoted their brand of `Urals rock` which would take them up to the late Nineties.

Titanic comes out in April 1994 in C.D fotmat and is their eighth album. Recorded in Yekaterinburg it is on the Jam Sound label and a member of Agata Kristie – Vadim Samoilov helps to produce it.It would go on to become one of their most popular.

Tutankhamun is the well known opening number. The intriguing and impressive sound is built up with a rhythm aided by a Jew’s harp and a clapping beat augmented by a repeated coda formed by bass,keyboards and violin. An oboe, or something of the kind, interjects later to lend an Eastern ambience to the proceedings as does the faux-African style crooning later on. Butusov eschews the usual build up-bridge-chorus line here, as he does in many of his pieces. We do however get a stage whispered repetition of the title towards the close of the song.

The title track `Titanic` also involves an historical reference with an evocation, in the lyrics, of blind ignorance of ones fate. (The lyrics did not come with the album and, although they are available on the net, I have not considered them here. Nautilius Pompilius are known for their lyrical ccontent and, for this very reason, it is interesting to see hiw their music stacks up when this aspect is left out).

Nautilus Pompilius playing live. [Yandex. Musika]

What a standout piece the third one is! `Polyana’s Morning` (`Utra Polini`), with its jangly guitars and blended base laid over a Casio style tik-tok rhythm over which Butusov sings, instead of intones for once, conjures up an elgaic beauty to compare with the best of Pink Floyd.

`Rascal and Angel` `(Negodyai ii Angel`) appears next and is a shorter rhythm based composition which seems to have been built around the vocals and then introduces a surprising keyboard interlude and some whistling. After the dreaminess of the previous track I found this one a little irritating.

The fifth offering `To Eloise` (`K Eloise`) boasts a sort of twenties jazz- swing approach and is something that could have almost appeared in Soviet times. However, for all its apparent lightness of touch `To Eloise` comprises a dark love song, of sorts.

`Air` (`Vosdukh`) is up next. This opens in an appropriate way with swirling, `cosmic` sounding keyboards before some slow guitar chords are added to the mix. This also features an enjoyable chorus complete with a pleasant melody and fades out as instruments take over.

`Wheels of Love` (`Kolesa Lyoobvi`), in contrast, seems like a jolly vintage rock and roll number complete with a boogying bass line but a definite oft repeated chorus line. One for the stilyagi.

The penultimate number `20,000` is the neaerst thing the album has to a dance piece:with a heavy bass and a great deal of electronic rhythmical doodling. This could almost be something from the `Head of Kamchatka` by Kino.

The final piece, called `Beast` (`Zver`) is another nugget to put alongside `Polyana’s morning`. It opens in an almost reggae like manner with a repetitive song sung over the regular beat and then the whole thing becomes graceful as majestic extended keyboard notes enter the fray and the sound becomes ever more elegant and soulful.

Taken as a whole we have here a listenable and durable art rock album which is well produced and well executed and varied enough to be appreciated without even understanding the meaning of the all important verses. Butusov’s vocal delivery, no doubt influenced by Tsoi, does lack variety but is distinctive and is no doubt something of a trademark for his generation of fans.