Day of the Oprichnik (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Ivan Lazhechnikov wrote the tragedy The Oprichniki ( Russian: Опричники), on which Tchaikovsky based his opera The Oprichnik. In turn, Tchaikovsky's opera inspired a 1911 painting by Apollinary Vasnetsov, depicting a city street and people fleeing in panic at the arrival of the oprichniki.

In the rearview mirror I see my homestead receding. A good house, with a heart and soul. I've been living in it for only seven months, yet it feels as though I was born and grew up there. The property used to belong to a comrade moneychanger at the Treasury: Gorokhov, Stepan Ignatievich. When he fell into disgrace during the Great Treasury Purge and exposed himself, we took him in hand During that hot summer a good number of Treasury heads rolled. Bobrov and five of his henchmen were paraded through Moscow in an iron cage, then flogged with the rod and beheaded on Lobnoe Mesto in Red Square. Half of the Treasury was exiled from Moscow beyond the Urals. There was a lot of work . . . The noble’s hands are immediately tied, and a gag stuffed in his mouth. He’s pushed by his elbows out into the yard. And the wife . . . We’ll handle the wife in a merrier fashion. That’s the way it’s usually done. She’s tied to the butcher table. Biće iznenađeni i oni koji su se nad Peljevinovim rečenicama pitao "na kojim si ti, čoveče, drogetinama ovo pisao".Vladimir Sorokin is one of Russia's greatest writers, and this novel is one of his best . . . A joy to read—more entertaining, dynamic, engaging, and deeply hilarious than a dystopian novel has any right to be.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story

Bookstands are also standardized, approved by His Majesty and approved by the Literary Chamber. Our people respect books. On the left side there's Orthodox Church literature; on the right the Russian classics; and in the middle, the latest works by contemporary writers. First I look over the prose of our country's contemporary writers: Ivan Korobov's White Birch; Nikolia Voropaevsky's Our Fathers; Isaak Epshtein's The Taming of the Tundra; Rashid Zametdinov's Russia--My Motherland; Pavel Olegov's The Nizhny Novgorod Tithe; Savvaty Sharkunov's Daily Life of the Western Wall; Irodiada Deniuzhkina's My Heart's Friend; Oksana Podrobskaya's The Mores of New Chinese Children. I know all these authors well. They're famous, distinguished. Caressed by the love of the people and His Majesty. Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2003), 123. Dead Man's Bluff, a very gory splatter-comedy about an incredibly dumb Bumbling Henchmen Duo hunting a MacGuffin for their mob boss (played by no one other than Nikita Mikhalkov), killing loads of people in process, often for very dumb reasons. Leviathan is an extremely cynical portrayal of government corruption in modern Russia and its ruinous effects on regular people in the country. The film was so condemnatory of the government that it's actually banned in its native country. In Krasnov's novel, a recurring themes is a dream that occurs in the mind of the hero where he sees a beautiful girl threatened by the zmei gorynych, the monstrous three-headed dragon of Russian mythology. [21] In Behind the Thistle, the girl symbolizes Russia and the zmei gorynych symbolizes the West. [21] In Sorokin's novel, Komyaga, under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs imagines himself and all of the other Oprichniki merging their bodies together to turn into a zmei gorynych. [21]The zmei gorynych then flies across the Atlantic Ocean to destroy the United States, the land of individualism and freedom. [21] The zmei gorynych proceeds to rape and kill an American woman, who symbolizes liberty and individualism, marking the triumph of the Asian collectivism over the Western individualism, the Russian "we" over the American "I". [22] Afterwards, Komyaga learns his other Oprichniki all had the same vision, showing their minds are all being merged into one collective entity. [21] Komyaga relates his demented, drug-fueled vision as an incantatory chant, using the style of a pseudo-medieval poem, which makes his vision sound both antiquated and blasphemous. [21] In this way, Sorokin inverts the key symbolism of Krasnov's book, turning Russia into the male zmei gorynych and the innocent girl becomes the West. [22] The sort of power that is depicted in Day of the Oprichnik is a specifically a masculine power as the Oprichnina is presented as all male "brotherhood" and the language that is evoked to describe power is a masculine language. [22] Women appear in Day of the Oprichnik only as rape victims, entertainers or sex objects as the unpopular czarina becomes popular because of her "mesmerizing" breasts. [11] Dobrynya Nikitich rescues Princess Zabava from the Zmey Gorynych, by Ivan Bilibin. In a hallucinatory drug sequence, Andrei Danialovich Komyaga who likes to cast himself as a bogatyr imagines himself and the other Oprichniki merging their bodies into a zmei gorynchy that destroys America.

A Novel

The oprichniks of the future ride through the Moscow traffic in their red Mercedovs in special lanes, their cars emitting a loud snarl to make traffic move over for them. Each car is fitted with a dead dog's head as the hood ornament and a broom behind to show that they sweep Russia clean of the Tsar's enemies. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. A fantasy variation on the Oprichnina appears in the Japanese light novel franchise Gate. It retains the name, purpose, activities, dog head motif, and even the use of brooms from the historic original. The novel Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin imagines the return of the Oprichniki in a futuristic-theocratic Russia. [10]

Fedka removes the tray and kneels, holding his arm out. Leaning on it, I rise. Fedka smells worse in the morning than in the evening. That's the truth of his body, and there's nothing to be done about it. Birch branches and steam baths won't help. Stretching and creaking, I walk over to the iconostasis, light the lampion, and kneel. I say my morning prayers, bow low. Fedka stands behind me; he yawns and crosses himself. It’s probably my own shortcoming, but I get the sense that some of Sorokin’s targets slipped by me . . . Or, to put that more positively, that Russian readers (or readers more well versed in the contemporary Russian scene), will get even more out of this. One bit that I particularly liked (which brought to mind an essay of Dubravka Ugresic’s from Thank You for Not Reading and plays to my obsessions) was this bit about literature in New Rus: Kotkin, Stephen (11 March 2011). "A Dystopian Tale of Russia's Future". The New York Times Book Review . Retrieved 11 April 2020. Sorokin [is] one of Russia's funniest, smartest and most confounding living writers.” —Elaine Blair, The Nation Later in the day he reports in person to the Kremlin, where he meets His Majesty’s wife, a cold but frivolous woman who can’t understand what animates the Russian people against her. She greets Komiaga with warm irony (“Hello, murderer”), and her beloved nervous greyhound feasts on finely chopped dove meat from a shell. (“Eat up now, my little oyster.”)In this case, there’s no really overarching plot to speak off aside from simply seeing what happens in a typical day in the life of a member of this special group. What they’re allowed to do, how their oppression works, etc. In contrast to the sci-fi book that relies on the creativeness of its inventions (social, scientific, and whatnot), the reason Sorokin’s book is mostly successful is due to its satirical charms and frightening truth that, no matter what changes, there’s always a secret group of oprichniki with special privileges. This book grew on me. It's not as satirically funny as I expected, but it's pretty intriguing in a sort of sci-fi-define-a-corrupt-world way. Especially like the bits about Russian literature. Writing a real review for Three Percent and starting The Ice Trilogy as soon as I can. (I just saw a performance of Ice--the second book in the trilogy--in NY and was reminded how creepy/intriguing that book really is. I think it was underrated when it came out . . . or it might take the whole trilogy to provide the right context.)

a b c d e f g h i Kotkin, Stephen (11 March 2011). "A Dystopian Tale of Russia's Future". The New York Times . Retrieved 24 July 2020. In 1564, Prince Andrey Kurbsky defected to the Lithuanians and commanded the Lithuanian army against Russia, devastating the Russian region of Velikiye Luki. Fedka is holding a tray. His face is creased and lopsided as it is every morning. He's carrying a traditional hangover assortment: a glass of white kvass, a jigger of vodka, a half-cup of marinated cabbage juice. I drink the juice. It nips my nose and purses my cheekbones. Exhaling, I toss the vodka down in a single gulp. Tears spring to my eyes, blurring Fedka's face. I remember almost everything—who I am, where, and what for. I steady my pace, inhaling cautiously. I wash the vodka down with the kvass. The minute of Great Immobility passes. I burp heartily, with an inner groan, and wipe away the tears. Now I remember everything.Most etymological and historical Russian dictionaries don’t include гойда , but they put айда and гайда together. Айда , they say, is from Siberia and Eastern Russians lands; гайда is from Ukrainian lands. Both came from Tatar language(s) and were words to urge on or drive animals — the steppe version of “come on, little doggies.” It means, they suggest: иди , идём , пошёл , погоняй , ступай , живей , скорей (go, let’s go, get going, hurry up, shake a leg, get a move on, faster). Alexandrov, Nikolay (15 November 2012). "Владимир Сорокин: "Гротеск стал нашим главным воздухом" "[Vladimir Sorokin: "The grotesque has become our main air"]. Colta.ru (in Russian) . Retrieved 11 April 2020. Historian Isabel de Madariaga has emphasized the role of the oprichnina in the consolidation of aristocratic power. Resettlement drastically reduced the power of the hereditary nobility. Oprichniki landowners who owed their loyalty to the throne replaced an aristocracy that might have evolved independent political ambitions. [28] Alternatively, Crummey has summarized the social effects of the oprichnina as a failure. From this perspective, the oprichnina failed to pursue coherent social motives and instead pursued a largely unfocused terror. [29] Such interpretations are derived from the 1960s works by Ruslan Skrynnikov who described the Oprichnina as the reign of terror designed to root out every possible challenge to the autocracy: Andrew, Christopher (2018). The Secret World- a History of Intelligence. Yale University Press. pp.141–157. ISBN 978-0-300-23844-0. Might this be something of a Sorokin moment in the Anglophone world? Is the pope German?” —Stephen Kotkin, The New York Times Book Review