The Lies of History

Book Review

Title: Solovyov and Larionov

Author: Eugene Vodolazkin

Translator: Lisa C Hayden

Publisher: OneWorld, London, 2018

Pages: 404

How factual is any historical discourse? How much truth do you expect from history books? I live in a country whose government has simply erased the history of a whole era, the three-century long Mughal reign – from the history textbooks given to school students. Some of the heroes of the freedom struggle are being villainised and vice-versa. Whose history will you trust: Ramachandra Guha’s or Hitesh Shankar’s? If the lion and the deer write the history of the same period in the same forest, which history will be credible to you?

The subjectivity of history is the most fundamental theme of Russian writer Eugene Vodolazkin’s 2009 novel [translated into English in 2018], Solovyov and Larionov. History is a compilation of the writer’s perspectives, obscured by time and personal biases. History is like literature to some extent. But literature admits that it is fiction while history pretends to be truth. This is what Solovyov, the young research-scholar and protagonist of this novel, shows us through his research as well as his life.

Solovyov’s research is on a real historical figure, General Larionov, who can be said to be the other protagonist of the novel. Larionov was a commander in the Imperial Russian Army and he led battles against the Bolshevik Red Army during the Civil War. No such prominent figure who fought the Red Army survived the War. They were all shot dead by the Reds. Larionov was an exception. He not only survived but also lived in his own aristocratic house though he had to share the house with many comrades. How did he manage to live on well into his old age? This is the mystery that Solovyov’s research is going to unearth.  

Solovyov was born in a poor family in the remote countryside. The place is named quite unimaginatively as Kilometre 715. There is a railway station in that place, but hardly any train stops there. Solovyov manages to complete his schooling by sheer determination and hard work. He reads a lot too and even falls in love with the librarian when he is still a little boy. The librarian doesn’t respond to the calf love, of course. Solovyov finds both love and sex in a girl called Leeza Larionova. Does the surname ring a bell? Yes, Leeza will later turn out to be the granddaughter of the object of Solovyov’s research. The plot will take a U-turn by and by.

Solovyov’s ambition, hard work and determination take him to St Petersburg where he is assigned the research topic. His research will take him to many places in one of which he meets the beautiful, young and seductive Zoya whose mother was General Larionov’s assistant in his old age. It is Zoya’s mother who wrote down the dictations of the general’s memoir. Zoya goes out of her way to get the fragments of those memoirs. It is with some difficulty that Solovyov will escape from the seductions of Zoya and move to other places for his research. Though Zoya is an employee at the Chekhov Museum, she possesses tremendous expertise in a non-Chekhovian domain, the narrator tells us, which can be fatal for a young and aspiring man.

The plot moves to a bewitching climax though there is no conclusion of any sort. This is a typical postmodern novel which seamlessly blends fact and fiction, past and present, multilayered fragments of human lives, and irony and humour.

What is life in the end? The novel does raise that question in the final pages. A hilarious tragedy. General Larionov, clever, hero, living legend of the Imperial Army… is now living on a squalid Soviet pension. Sharing a communal toilet. Solovyov’s professor thinks “it is silly” and it would have been better for the general to be shot dead long ago. The professor himself is now in a hospital, as he expresses this view, lowering his pyjama for the nurse to give an injection on his bum. “Relax,” the nurse admonishes him, “Don’t squeeze your buttocks.”

This is not a light read at all. If you are interested in serious literature, go for it. It can be a little challenging too in some places.

PS. This post is part of the Bookish League blog hop hosted by Bohemian Bibliophile