Cynic (novel)

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Cynic (Russian: Циники) is a novel by Anatoli Marienhof . It was published in 1928 by the Berlin publishing house Petropolis and in 1929, in the German translation by Gregor Jarcho , by S. Fischer Verlag . It was not until 1988 that the book was published in the Soviet Union, where the film adaptation of the same name was made in 1991, directed by Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Meschijew .

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War communism and the first phase of consolidation in the Soviet Union form the historical context of the novel . At the center of the plot are the first-person narrator Vladimir and his wife Olga: two young, middle-class intellectuals and thus members of a social class that has lost its importance due to the October Revolution . They try to isolate themselves from the social upheaval in Moscow and live only from their love and enjoyment. At the end of the novel, Olga announces her suicide by phone. Vladimir rushes home, but can no longer prevent her death.

Other characters in the novel are:

  • the maid Marfuscha
  • Sergei, a friend of Vladimir and at times Olga's lover. He is wounded and traumatized in the Russian Civil War .
  • Ilya Petrovich Dokuchayev, a wealthy, opportunistic black market trader. Olga spends a night with him for the price of 15,000 dollars and donates the money to the hungry rural population .

Structure and style

The novel is preceded by a quote from Stendhal and one from Nikolai Semjonowitsch Leskow as mottos . The novel itself is divided into four chapters, which are headed with the years 1918, 1919, 1922 and 1924. Each chapter in turn consists of many short, numbered sections, from one line to a few pages in length. These sections are arranged in such a way that the somewhat detached, unworldly life of Olga and Vladimir is juxtaposed with the arbitrariness of the newly established Bolshevik government as well as the horrors of the civil war and famine. While in the sections about Olga and Vladimir a very richly illustrated narrative style with unconventional comparisons predominates, the social and political situation is presented very briefly and objectively.

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