One of the most popular contemporary Russian fiction writers, Andrei Astvatsaturov, has added a fifth novel to his bibliography. After reading his new book “Mirrors and Webs”, Sergey Cherednichenko I was surprised by the harmonious combination of poisonous irony and serious moral issues.
The novel takes place from July 2002 to April 2003 in Komarovo, a commuter train, St. Petersburg. Ironic intonation and many details convey the atmosphere of the decaying dachas of the Soviet intellectual aristocracy, where even the dining room “smells of intellectual dampness.” The main character, Kirill Bogdanov, on whose behalf the story is told, is a young teacher of the humanities. It is easy to discern autobiographical features in him: profession – literary critic, grandfather-academician (Astvatsaturov is the author of many books and articles, mainly about English-language literature, a brilliant lecturer and grandson of the world-famous philologist Viktor Zhirmunsky).
The outwardly successful Bogdanov is immersed in a sluggish depression: he is passive and irritable, sometimes it seems that he despises all of humanity, but most of all himself – “a skinny mannequin with sagging shoulders and a flat torso.” With trademark St. Petersburg snobbery, he mocks the naive tourists who turn up, answering their question that the Field of Mars is named after “Marx, the great revolutionary.” “Why is it then Mars and not Marx? – How why? There is a rule in the Russian language when a consonant sound drops out of a word.” But the very next moment he pitifully snaps at the pharmacy when they refuse to sell him antidepressants with an expired prescription. Internal contradictions and mental illnesses do not prevent him from easily having affairs with attractive girls who come into view – first with the smart Olya, then with the simple-minded Sveta.
Misanthropy and complexes, a heightened sense of self-esteem and oppression by lack of money and, as a result, emotional discord. Perhaps the most powerful episode in this regard is in which the hero is late for the train and knocks down a six-year-old child. “It didn’t turn out well. Okay… I’ll do penance on myself – eat ice cream on the way. They say it’s harmful,” Bogdanov consoles himself. And this cynical mockery refers to the fantasy of Liza Khokhlakova from The Brothers Karamazov, who wanted to eat pineapple compote while contemplating the suffering of the boy she crucified. The train takes him to an interview that promises a solid salary; he dreams of prosperity, but the prospect of becoming a recipient of American grants makes him disgusted.
It may seem that the hero is pathetic and disgusting, and that the author has written a cruel caricature of himself. But Bogdanov, on the contrary, evokes sympathy, which is achieved by lightness of style and humor of all shades of black. The narration, as usual with Astvatsaturov, is filled with caustic sketches. Just look at the episode with the hooligan critic Viktor Toporov, which contains a dozen literary gossip and vulgar epigrams on three pages. In addition, the social environment around Bogdanov turns out to be much more vulgar.
Autobiographical life material serves the author not so much as a reason for confession, but rather for depicting the academic environment of the early 2000s. Astvatsaturov’s book is not a revealing auto-fiction, but a full-fledged university novel.
The hero’s internal fragmentation is overshadowed by the external university conflict between fathers (Nikolai Obukhov) and children (Petr Zuev and his satellites, including Bogdanov). And here the almost Dovlatov-esque ironic buffoonery is replaced by an almost Trifonov-esque moral conflict.
Zuev wants to organize a fundamentally new curriculum at the institute. Obukhov, an outstanding representative of the Soviet school, being an authoritative member of the academic council, blocks this initiative. At first glance, here, as in socialist realism, there is a “conflict between the best and the good,” and progress is inevitable, but in fact we have a conflict between the worst and the bad. Obukhov – for the dictate of science over the student, for scholasticism, his “expiration date has expired.” Zuev is in favor of “getting rid of all this donkey duty and giving students the freedom to choose which disciplines to study,” but also for students’ lack of an overall picture, in Solzhenitsyn’s words, for “education.”
The dramatic collision is that Bogdanov, Obukhov’s student, finds himself drawn into a web of intrigue against his teacher. It is to him that Zuev, a sort of little imp, instructs him to dig up incriminating evidence on Obukhov in the university archives: “Everyone, my brother, has something dirty behind their soul, some kind of ugly story… What do you think: they made their quarries there in their beloved Sovk with clean hands? In short, find out. So that we have something to bargain with him later.”
And Bogdanov, taking advantage of the thoroughness of his Soviet training, actually finds in the archive documents from the selection committee, from which it follows that Obukhov is not at all a “model of decency.” In the mid-80s, he ensured his career growth by turning a blind eye to how a talented applicant was failed in the entrance exams in order to promote the dean’s daughter. A typical story, there are probably thousands of them. But the young man, perhaps facing injustice for the first time, took his own life.
At the end of the novel, Bogdanov presents Obukhov with the documents he discovered. Astvatsaturov masterfully creates a situation of moral stalemate, when any choice forces the student and teacher to compromise with their conscience. And neither antidepressants nor proprietary self-irony will help here.
Andrey Astvatsaturov. “Mirrors and webs.”— M.: AST: Editorial office of Elena Shubina, 2026.
