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The siloviki tend engage in gross corruption while mouthing ultra-patriotic language that they all merely serving the state, and that what is good for the Russian state is always good for Russia. In the novel, gigantic underground high-speed trains link every city in Russia and everything has been computerized. In Behind the Thistle, people have burned their internal passports to show that now free under the Tsar while in Day of the Oprichnik people have burned their foreign passports to show that are now free from foreign influence. De todas formas, encuentro una lástima que no se publiquen más obras de Sorokin en español, pues un narrador como él, iconoclasta y vigorosamente satírico, combinado con un conocimiento profundo de la literatura, tampoco son tan comunes en
In Sorokin's book, violence has become a cultural ritual and forms an integral part of how society functions.The only foreign things that make it into Russia are sales of natural gas and goods from the China-Europe transit. Rusija je opasana Velikim Zidom koji je deli od ostatka sveta u kome, između ostalih, žive arapski sajberpankeri, melanholici, prokleti budisti, pluralisti, megaonanisti i ko još sve ne. Dan opričnika" je satira napisana uz poštovanje svih glavnih pravila rimske sature, što me je najpre fasciniralo.
Hijinks, grotesqueries, and brutalities are in the realm of A Clockwork Orange and the humor that (I guess) is there reminds me of 2017’s The Death of Stalin, which I wasn’t quite a fan of. Vladimir Sorokin describes in detail bizarre and sadistic rules by which previous and current rulers of Russia govern the huge empire. His own oprichniki, the FSB, has heavily identified itself with the Russian Orthodox Church (as a further touch, they switched to black uniforms the year the novel came out). Corporal punishment is back and the monarchy is divided once again, but this is the future, the not so distant future for the Russian empire, or is it? The neo-medieval enforcer's morning sees him murder a boyar (nobleman) and join in the gang-rape of his wife, a task he justifies to himself as important work.
Some argue that Dugin has no real public face in Russia, that he’s overhyped in the West and interviewed on television precisely because of his weird ideas.
The disembodied Tsar may, to some degree resemble Putin, but in many ways (wife, son-in-law, background) he definitely does not. The author has captured this recurrent and deeply violent character of Russian history, since the time of Ivan the Terrible. Opričnici su nešto između templara, pretorijanske grarde, zemunskog klana, udbaških tajnih službi (da ne nabrajam dalje). Sorokin told an interviewer he composed Day of the Oprichnik in a single month “like an uninterrupted stream of bile,” as part of a conscious decision to become more politicized in his writing. Thus, the gang-rape of a woman whose only crime was to be the wife of a free-thinking boyar is justified by the narrator, Andrei Komyaga, under the grounds that it was done to promote a collective identity for all the Oprichniki as it is the wish of all Oprichniki to be united together into one collective mind devoid of any sort of individuality or identity.Now some 15 years old, this violent and perverse satire of Russian nationalism and despotism has become sadly more relevant since its writing, not less. In both books, people watch patriotic plays at the theater, dance to the traditional music of the balalaika, listen to singers who sing only folk songs, and read newspapers beautifully printed in the ornate Russian of the 16th century, which have no editorials about any issue. Anyone who wants to learn more about Russia and what could be the outcome of [Vladimir] Putin's rule should read the book. The bravura epic Ice trilogy chronicled the steady corruption of a group of “pure” Gnostic souls from outer space reborn in human bodies who ally themselves with successive autocratic Russian regimes to fulfill their single-minded goal of escaping this vile planet. n+1 is a print and digital magazine of literature, culture, and politics published three times a year.
Apparently the novel is also a parody of the 1927 novel Behind the Thistle by General Pyotr Krasnov, but as I haven't read it, I can't comment. Komyaga is one of the top enforcers in the secret police, and during one day he gets to see a lot of action; he roots out and hangs unwanted elements, he oversees the day's state-approved dissident poetry and makes sure it's not too subversive, he flies to Sibiria to consult with soothsayers and make deals with the Chinese, he does very expensive drugs, he philosophizes on the importance of Russianness. With a nod to Solzhenitsyn's gulag masterpiece "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," the book follows a single day in the life of the oprichnik Andrei Danilovich Komiaga. Russia’s new government is an amalgamation of their previous dystopias, and so this story, though brief, is filled to the brim with Russian history. He was a victim of them in 2002, when a pro-Putin youth group gathered in front of the Bolshoi Theater to demonstrate against an opera that Sorokin had written (as librettist).Y sin embargo en el saqueo narrado al inicio comprobamos como incurren en las mayores depravaciones, luego a lo largo del día también disfrutan de placeres carnales fuertemente censurados por la opinión pública y, en fin, Sorokin expone así la hipocresía que se construye sobre un régimen brutal, necesaria para mantener la maquinaria funcionando y produciendo riquezas a mayo gloria de su oligarquía.