Monumental Propaganda

May 24, 2004
Voinovich is a self-consciously Gogolian writer, whose first novels, published during the 1970s, spiced the sometimes self-important prose (and posing) of the dissidents with a very earthy humor. His latest novel, which tells the story of Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina, the most ardent Stalinist ever produced by the provincial town of Dolgov, stands dissidence on its head. Aglaya, after accruing power while the iron man was alive, is expelled from the Party after 1956. Aglaya may be a narrow, fanatical Stalinist, but she is, perversely, admirable, too, especially in comparison with her conformist comrades. Through the first three-fourths of the novel, Voinovich is wonderfully deft at balancing the grotesque and the realistic. His central symbol is a frighteningly lifelike statue of Stalin that Aglaya rescues from the junk heap and installs in her apartment. In the last quarter of the novel, Voinovich takes us rapidly through the last three ages of "Terror," ending on a very sour note with: "Terror Unlimited (the present time)." State repression has been replaced with hoodlum disorder in Dolgov, and the Party headquarters with a casino/strip joint. In spite of the somewhat unsatisfactory finale, Voinovich's novel is otherwise a fine study of the peculiar buffoonery of Soviet life, with its fearful conformities, petty dissidents and its decadent final decades, which Voinovich very justly terms "somnambulistic." Agent, Georges Borchardt.

April 15, 2004
Popular Russian satirist Voinovich (Moscow 2042) presents an amusing cultural overview of the past 50 years of Soviet/Russian history from the perspective of Aglaya Revkina, unabashed Stalinist. When statues of Stalin start coming down, Aglaya installs her town's eight-foot iron likeness of the fallen leader in her living room. As rulers come and go, Aglaya's fortunes change: in the liberal Khrushchev years, she is expelled from the Communist Party; during the Brezhnev years, she is courted by a general and plied with hints of Stalin's eventual redemption; and then, finally, she wakes up in a capitalist country and is forced to stand for her views one last time. During Aglaya's inability to see societal changes owing to her red-tinted glasses, Voinovich shifts to her sharply drawn neighbors, including a dissident writer who eventually emigrates and a disabled Afghanistan veteran who becomes a meticulous bomb-maker with the help of his grandmother. Highly recommended.-Heather Wright, AWBERC Lib., Cincinnati

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Starred review from August 1, 2004
In his first novel in 12 years, the Russian author of the celebrated" Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin " revisits the provincial city of Dolgov and the character of Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina.\b \b0 Aglaya is a committed Stalinist who, unlike her more flexible comrades, refuses to bend to the shifting political winds in the Soviet Union. The novel begins in 1956, just after Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin at the twentieth Communist Party congress. Aglaya is not only politically inflexible but her love for Stalin has a distinctly erotic twist, especially as related in a flashback. She rescues the statue of the dictator just as it is being hauled from the town square to a scrap-metal yard and, to the consternation of her neighbors in the apartment below, installs it in her own apartment. Through primarily Aglaya's eyes and a number of other wonderfully realized characters, Voinovich gives the reader an encapsulated view of the decline of the Soviet Union and the lost opportunities of Russia in the immediate aftermath of the breakup of the USSR--a tragicomic tale to which he does superb justice. As expected, Bromfield's translation flows smoothly and adheres to the author's voice. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)