Summer 2002 A Private Hero for a Privatized Country By Leon Aron The most interesting phenomenon on Russia’s market: there is little sex (and its brief descrip- literary scene today is the popularity of the Erast tions are positively Victorian); fights, while Fandorin mysteries by Grigoriy Shalvovich Chkhar- brutal and explicitly portrayed, are infrequent; tishvili, who writes as Boris Akunin. the language is not just clean but pristinely Although the books are expensive by Russian old-fashioned. standards at an equivalent of almost $3 for a copy, In the absence of pat explanations, the success series sales skyrocketed from 50,000 in 1999 to of the Fandorin mysteries may signal momentous 3 million in 2001.1 In July 2000, 200,000 copies developments in Russian culture and society as of the latest two books sold in one week; by the nation enters its second post-Soviet decade. early August the two volumes were in the third printing.2 By the end of 2000 Chkhartishvili had A Delightful Read become “Russia’s most widely read contemporary writer.”3 Strategically positioned inside the cover of every Russian television launched a series based on the Fandorin book are several pages of rave reviews first book of the Fandorin cycle, Azazel, in March from leading Russian periodicals, which extol the 2002. Two months later a Moscow theater staged a series for the “hard-boiled,” “clever,” “paradox- play based on the same book. Several books in the ridden,” and “intricate” plots; the “brilliant” and Russian Outlook series have been translated into German, Japanese, “very fine” stylization; and the “meticulous” lan- French, and Italian. Paul Verhoeven, who directed guage exuding the “mouth-watering aroma of great the Hollywood action blockbusters Basic Instinct Russian literature.” “Beautiful, clever, classy,” one and Total Recall, is reportedly turning Azazel into reviewer concluded.6 a movie for international distribution,4 and the Few readers will find the critics’ praise extrava- Oscar-winning (Burned by the Sun) Russian director gant. The texts are delicious: an absorbing and Nikita Mikhalkov is said to be contemplating a utterly enjoyable read, briskly narrated and brim- film based on the books.5 Websites devoted to the ming with the authenticity of language and detail, Chkhartishvili oeuvre include two set up by fans verve, irony, and elegance. The language is crafted (www.fandorin.ru and www.erastomania.narod.ru) carefully and tastefully after the classic nineteenth- and the author’s official publicity site century Russian prose of Nikolai Leskov, Ivan (www.akunin.ru). Goncharov, and Sergei Aksakov with echoes of Yet none of Chkhartishvili’s books contains Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Shown the ingredients commonly associated with success through the eyes of a young orphaned boy in in a new postauthoritarian postcensorship mar- Lyubovnik Smerti (Death’s lover), the Moscow dno ket. They lack formerly forbidden fruit assumed (bottom) district Khitrovka—with its thieves, to be irresistible to the newly liberated literary gangsters (fartovye), prostitutes, and their master- fully resurrected century-old lingo—recalls Oliver Leon Aron is a resident scholar and the director of Twist in sadness and gentle humor. The author Russian studies at AEI. dedicates every Fandorin book “to the Nineteenth - 2 - Century, when literature was great, the belief in money to pay for it. In the words of a Russian literary progress boundless, and crimes were committed and critic, “It’s like the Klondike. Chkhartishvili discovered solved with elegance and taste.” a huge hunger for good popular literature, and it’s now In the expertly paced, suspenseful yet plausible bad taste to read trash.”10* Following Akunin’s success, tales, the very likable hero begins by investigating Russia’s biggest commercial publishers, AST, Eksmo, murders (or suicides) and soon finds himself battling and Olma—all privately owned—began supplementing homicidal maniacs and sadists, a master spy, a world- thrillers and romances with serious fiction by new Russ- renowned hired killer, Russian leftist terrorists ian authors.11 “We realized we’d been ignoring a huge (expertly modeled on the Socialist Revolutionaries), section of the reading public,” a spokesman for one pub- or a gang of international criminals who kidnap a lishing house admitted. “People have had their fill of young grand duke on the eve of the coronation of potboilers; they want serious literature.”12 Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. Along the way Fandorin becomes involved in grand diplomatic games and the The Hero intrigues of the tsarist court. Chkhartishvili thinks his books “a cocktail, with In keeping with the genre, the Akunin books owe Dostoevsky’s language, a splash of Umberto Eco, much of their appeal to the hero, the master sleuth. and plots along the line of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains Orphaned at nineteen when his father, a bankrupt of the Day.”7 He aims to bridge the gap “between liter- nobleman, died, Fandorin is a descendant of German ature that soars and literature that is in the gutter.”8 knights, crusaders, and soldiers of fortune, one of “Russia never had commercial literature for the middle whom, by the name of Von Dorn, came to Russia in classes—partly because it never had a middle class,” the seventeenth century and became the captain of Chkhartishvili told an interviewer. “We either had Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s palace guards. (Every one pulp fiction, that intellectuals were embarrassed to of those details is important, for sooner or later the read or high-brow literature.”9 author puts all of them to work.) Again as befits the canon, Fandorin is intelligent, hard- The Hegelian Triad working, and fearless. A fitness enthusiast, he daily prac- tices Japanese martial arts, which get him out of many The process that brought the Akunin books tight corners. (Mirroring the lifelong hobby—judo—of to the top of the Russian literary market may be the country’s widely popular and youthful president does described in terms of the Hegelian dialectic familiar not hurt sales.) to college-educated Russians (older than forty) from A tall, broad-shouldered, trim brunet with bright the compulsory courses in Marxism. First was the blue eyes and a neat moustache, Fandorin dresses thesis: the increasingly stale classic canon on the one impeccably and looks like “a model in the latest hand and propaganda trash on the other, both pro- Paris fashion magazine” in perfectly tailored coats tected by censorship from competition or innova- and snow-white collars and cuffs. Unless working tion. Then came the antithesis, a headlong plunge undercover, he is never without gloves, top hat, and into a vat of forbidden fruit: the rediscovery of the elegant walking stick, which naturally conceals a razor- banned serious writers and essayists (in Russia the sharp blade. list, dating from 1918, was very long) during Gor- The finishing touch is his gray temples, incongruous bachev’s glasnost (1988–1990), followed by a quick because of the youth and vigor that the rest of his body descent into trash, typical of all fledgling postauthori- signals, even as we see him approach and pass the forty- tarian cultures. The synthesis occurred when the year mark. They invariably pique women’s curiosity and previously discarded national classic tradition had pity—a combination that proves fatal to many female been retrieved, revived, and recast by an infusion hearts. The grayness is the result of a personal tragedy at of irreverence, experimentation, and occasional subversion. * Chkhartishvili is not the first writer benefiting from the trend. A The success of the Akunin books proves the growing fusion of classic tradition and postmodernist form characterizes the cultural presence of the post-Soviet middle class, which works by Mikhail Butov, Ergaliy Ger, Dmitriy Lipskerov, Vladimir has the taste to appreciate the new literature—and the Makanin, and Viktor Pelevin. - 3 - the end of the first book. Losing his bride to a terrorist of age and lives his adult life in the immediate aftermath bombing makes Fandorin a confirmed bachelor and of Russia’s first (and until Gorbachev only) great liberal thus opens the narratives to all manner of sidelines and revolution from above, which began with the abolition subplots to enliven the mysteries with the hero’s intense of serfdom in 1861 and ended with the murder of the but almost always chaste relationships with willful, revolution’s engineer, Tsar Alexander II, by leftist terrorists independent, strong, intelligent, and feminist-minded on March 1, 1881. A conservative retrenchment ensued beautiful young women. under his successors, Alexander III and Nicholas II. In the sleuthing pantheon, Fandorin most closely In addition to liberation of the serfs, Alexander II’s resembles Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers’s athletic, reforms included radical decentralization and local self- smart, and charming aristocratic playboy (like Fandorin, a government by elected representatives; abolition or cur- car enthusiast)—at least until he renounces bachelorhood tailment of exclusive privileges; courts “in which all the by marrying Harriet Vane. Chkhartishvili wants Hugh subjects were equal”13 before the law, trials by jury in Grant to play his hero. capital cases, and a competitive judicial process, in which the defense (advokaty) freely vied with state prosecutors Existential Choices of the 1880s and 2002 for juries’ votes (which, among other marvels, resulted in a nonguilty verdict for the female assassin of the head of Yet there is far more to Fandorin’s appeal than his the Russian secret police); huge increases in the number shrewdness, courage, and good looks. In Chkhartishvili’s of primary schools, funded and run by local authorities intricate narratives, multilayered and chockfull of allu- and open to children of all social and ethnic origins; sions, the hero’s attractiveness to the Russian reader is higher education for women and Jews; and growing likely to be magnified by the era in which the author autonomy and self-government of universities.