Representation of the Soviet statehood in M. Elizarov’s Cartoons [Multiki]

Abstract

The article discusses M. Elizarov’s novel Cartoons [Multiki] set in 1980s–1990s Russia. Due to its ambivalence and Elizarov’s signature total eclecticism and allusiveness, the novel is viewed as a receptional puzzle that Yamina sets out to solve. She suggests that the key device shaping the novel is provided by the topographical and symbolic opposition of Krasnoslavsk, the city where the protagonist spends his formative years coinciding with the final throes of the Soviet Union, to ‘the City of N,’ an illustration of the USSR sliding into something nameless and presumably terrifying that destroys families and lives. Soviet realia receive an ambivalent implementation: on the one hand, the Union is shown as a sacred image of a guarding angel, who watches over the heroes and repels evil. On the other hand, it symbolizes mystical kabbalistic knowledge passed on from a tutor to a teenage student, turning the latter into a true fighter and arming him to fight the capitalist world.