chapter eleven

THE ‘KHAZAR’-‘VARANGIAN’ DIALOGUE IN DMITRY BYKOV’S ZhD: SOME PSYCHOANALYTICAL OBSERVATIONS

Andrei Rogatchevski (University of Glasgow, Glasgow)

Dmitry Bykov (b. 1967) is a proli c writer and media personality, whose two dozen books or so include poetry (Poslednee vremia [The End-time], 2006),  ction (such as the prize-winning novels Orfograia [Orthography], 2003; and Evakuator [The Evacuator], 2005) and journalism (e.g. Blud truda [Lust for Labour], 2003; and Khroniki blizhaishei voiny [The Annals of the Imminent War], 2005), as well as the biographies of Boris Pasternak and Bulat Okudzhava. Bykov’s ZhD1 is an alternative history novel, published in Moscow in 2006. It took Bykov ten years to complete. According to his interview to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty of 29 October 2007, Bykov considers ZhD his favourite undertaking, which includes ‘everything that [he] knows and understands’. At the same time, the novel’s blurb characterises it as ‘the most politically incorrect book of the new millennium’. ZhD claims that ‘any interpretation of history is acceptable’ because ‘no one knows what really happened’ and ‘all the sources have been falsi ed to some degree’.2 Russian history is depicted in ZhD as an on-going struggle between two ethnic entities, the ‘Varangians’ and the ‘Khazars’ (I prefer to introduce and keep these terms in inverted commas because they do not

1 ZhD is an abbreviation with multiple meanings. One of them assumes that the letters stand for zhivye dushi (living souls), in acknowledgement of Gogol’s epic Dead Souls (1841) that has inspired Bykov’s book (following Gogol’s example, Bykov calls ZhD a poema). Living Souls have been chosen as ZhD’s title in its abridged English translation by Cathy Porter (London: Alma Books, 2010; for a review by Rachel Polonsky, see The New York Review of Books of 8 November 2012). 2 Dmitry Bykov, ZhD, Moscow: Vagrius, 2007, p. 147. All the translations from Bykov (and other sources in Russian) are mine. 176 andrei rogatchevski seem to have much in common with the Varangians and the Khazars as modern historiography describes them). ‘Khazars’ had allegedly conquered Russia (or whatever it had been known as at the time) in VI century ad, while ‘Varangians’ came to replace them approximately four hundred years later. Since then, ‘Varangians’ and ‘Khazars’ have been  ghting continuously for control over Russia (thus, the 1917 revolution and Yeltsin’s presidency are described as a ‘Khazar’ comeback after the periods of the ‘Varangian’ rule). Meanwhile, the indigenous population (which is given no ethnonym and is neither ‘Varangian’ nor ‘Khazar’) wastes all its energy trying to adapt to whichever side gains the upper hand. The novel’s main action takes place in the near future, when a ‘Khazar’ state called the ‘Great Khaganate’ (easily identi able as Israel) goes to war with Russia (ruled at this point by the ‘Varangians’) and wages battles on its territory intending to win it back from the ‘Varangians’. ZhD explains many Russian problems by the fact that both the ‘Varan- gians’ and the ‘Khazars’ are ‘alien invaders who cannot ever make some- one else’s soil their native. This is where the perennial Russian rootless- ness, fruitlessness and aimlessness of any creative enterprise originate. h…i ‘Varangians’ believe in the power vertical, statist rhetoric and ruling with an iron  st, but they treat their powerful state as an opportunity to humiliate and enslave others. ‘Khazars’ support a ‘horizontal’ approach [to manage- ment], but use the concepts of market and freedom to destroy and enslave others too, so the end result is always the same’.3 Given that Bykov’s ‘Varangians’ and ‘Khazars’ are broadly equivalent to ‘Russians’ and ‘Jews’ respectively,4 ZhD boldly lends itself open to accusa- tions of being both Russophobic and anti-Semitic at the same time. The following quote from a conversation between a ‘Khazar’ called Everstein and a ‘Varangian’ called Volokhov could be used as an example of Russophobia. Everstein says: ‘Why do Russians do to themselves things that even the Tar- tar invaders could not have thought of? A certain tendency can be traced. A native population would not treat its own land and people like that, nipping anything cultural in the bud before it starts blossoming. You are strangers to

3 Aleksandr Garros, ‘Polnyi razryv’, Gudok, 6 October 2006. 4 See Kirill Reshetnikov, ‘Avtoru polegchalo. Delo za chitatelem’, Gazeta, 4 October 2006; cf. Aleksandr Garros’s opinion that Bykov’s ‘Varangians’ represent the ‘men of the soil (poch- venniki) and the statists (gosudarstvenniki) of the non-Jewish Caucasian type’, while his ‘Khazars’ symbolize the ‘liberal proponents of complete marketization (rynochniki) of the Jewish type’ (Garros, op. cit.).