panguitch's Full Review: Vladimir Voinovich - Moscow 2042
Vladimir Voinovich, Russian satirist and former dissident, treats us to a longer work in Moscow: 2042. Written in 1986 and speculating about the future fall of communism in the USSR, the novel is both funny and eerily accurate.
Premise
In Moscowrep communism has been perfected: not only does everyone carry their own identification papers, but they also carry papers for their feces, or “secondary matter”. At a local comfoodest (communist food establishment—such Orwellian acronyms permeate the book) these papers can be presented and punched to bring about the fruition of the slogan “Everyone who hands in secondary matter, will dine on primary, served on a platter”. Simple enough, but Vitaly Nikitich Kartsev is at an impasse. Someone stole his chamber-pot. Without night soil to turn in, he won’t be given any primary matter (vegetarian pork). Without primary matter to ingest, he can’t produce more secondary matter. Things get tight, but before he starves, Kartsev is saved by events bigger than himself. Such things are exactly what he’s come to the future to witness.
It may have started as a lark, but with funding from a publishing house Kartsev bought himself a plane ticket to Moscow, 2042. Before setting off, he’s accosted by his old friend Bukashev, now a general in the KGB. Bukashev is planning on making some changes to save communism, and would love it if, upon returning from his trip, Kartsev would tell him how things turned out. And he’s not the only one. The mystic author Sim Simych Karnavalov has plans to restore the monarchy with himself as Tsar, and asks Kartsev to distribute his literature in the future. Even the Arabs have favors they ‘ask’ of Kartsev.
When he arrives, the close relationship between secondary and primary matter isn’t the only surprise awaiting him. True communism has finally been achieved. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Of course, certain people are determined by the government to have higher needs than others. The Genialissimo rules from orbit, and his cult of personality dominates popular culture. Nevertheless, there are Simites brewing a revolution. Kartsev himself, and the book he will, or has, or has yet to, or did write will prove the deciding factor in Russia’s future.
Characters
Kartsev narrates the tale in first person. His own foibles, especially his stubbornness and weakness for women and alcohol, complicate his already difficult situation. But he’s more than just a tour guide through this satirically dystopic future. His decisions eventually help shape it. His personality drives the humor, boisterously arrogant at times while impotent in crises of temptation. Even when holding staunchly to principles he’s comic in his outward pomposity and inner vacillations. At times he clearly sees and comments on the absurdity of this future society, at others his seeming complicity with it highlights that absurdity with equal effectiveness.
Karnavalov follows in the long tradition of weird mystics sprouting from Russian soil. His sixty volume Greater Zone is the lynchpin of his plan to restore the monarchy. He lives aesthetically, writing eighteen hours a day and rehearsing his triumphal entry on a white horse. He’s self-righteous, demanding, and dangerous. Just the sort of wacko to rise to power.
Bukashev’s no fool. He knows communism is failing. But he sees one chance and plans to take it. Naturally, he’d like to know if it works out, which is where Kartsev comes in. But what Kartsev finds in 2042 is that it worked all too well.
Other major characters in the future include Dzerzhin, a major general in state security who’s also employed by the CIA, and a closet Simite. Smerchev, the straight laced lieutenant general in the literary service. And Iskrina, a captain in the literary service who is ‘personally’ assigned to Kartsev. The bureaucrats are individuated, but typically self-serving and ingratiating to superiors, and condescending to inferiors. The degree to which each character sees the absurdity of their society defines them, and gives the reader a variety of ironic perspectives.
Style
This is the funniest work from Voinovich I’ve read yet, surpassed only by The Fur Hat. The book is divided into seven parts with numerous chapters. They’re short, episodic, and his dry, incisive wit pervades each. A favorite involves Kartsev’s tour of the Instcrenewhum (The Institute for the Creation of a New Human Being) where the next step in human evolution is being taken. Kartsev’s been given grandiose expectations but gets confused when he’s shown an orgy. He politely tells his guide he’s not interested in peep shows.
“This is not a peep show, this is a purely scientific institution. Can you guess what those people are doing?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think I can.”
“No, no, you can’t,” he said unequivocally. “You couldn’t begin to understand what they’re doing. What these people are doing is what I told you about before—creating a new human being.”
“Why are you telling me something so obvious?” I said. “You think we had a different way of making new people in my day?”
Being appreciative of what is perhaps a particular taste of humor, I found myself having to explain my guffaws to my wife. Kartsev’s unfaithfulness to his own wife also occasions some deliciously silly situations, as do his struggle over secondary matter and his reactions to other future phenomena.
Reactions and Recommendation
Despite some loose ends that are unsatisfactorily tied up and would have been better left out altogether (esp. the Arabs), Moscow: 2042 is a delightful book. The narrator, bagging on science fiction all the while, relates a tale of time travel and future dystopia. This isn’t to say you should expect much SF here. Despite the time travel and the CIA’s propagandistic projection of Dallas onto the clouds from moon-based lasers, no techiness is explained, and no such details are essential to events. Instead, human nature and its proclivity toward abandoning freedom to oppressive governments is the subject. The paradoxes of time travel are highlighted by Kartsev’s reading a book he hasn’t written yet and being asked to change it, but such ridiculousness is to be savored, not explained by scientific jargon.
The absurdities proliferated by this society in its strivings toward communist ideals are all too believable. And the adaptations of its people to such conditions are credible. Such truthfulness makes the humor that much more effective, the exaggerations that much more appropriate. And the funniest thing of all is how the end of communism, a few short years after this book was published, reflected (refracted?) Voinovich’s portrayal of revolution in 2042, minus the exaggerations.
- Panguitch
(Note: In this review and in my review of Voinovich's Ivankiad I have been very tough in my ratings. That's because of the high expectations I have of this author. Compared to the body of literature out there, this is definitely a five-star book. Perhaps it's not fair to use a different standard, but I am.)
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