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Повести последних дней / Tales of the Last Days #1
Казенная сказка
It was easy to fall into Karabas, as easy as falling down a hole, but it was hard, to put it bluntly, to get out again. Never mind the zeks, even the soldiers were exiled ...' Deep in the desolate steppe, Captain Khabarov waits out his service at a camp where the news arrives in bundles of last year's papers and rations turn up rotting in their trucks. The captain hopes for nothing more from life than a meagre pension and a state-owned flat. Until, one Spring, he decides to plant a field of potatoes to feed his half-starved men ...This blackly comic novel shows the unsettling consequences of thinking for yourself under the Soviet system. Oleg Pavlov's first novel, published when he was only 24, Captain of the Steppe was immediately praised for its chilling but humane and hilarious depiction of the Soviet Empire's last years. The first in a trilogy, this novel already confirms Pavlov as a worthy successor to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
3 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Oleg Pavlov
18 books8 followersOleg Pavlov (Russian: Олег Олегович Павлов; born: March 16, 1970 in Moscow) was a prominent Russian writer, and a winner of the Russian Booker Prize.
Born in Moscow, he served in the Interior Ministry troops near the city of Karaganda. The events that Pavlov portrayed in his stories and novels were inspired by his own experiences as a prison camp guard.
During his service, Pavlov suffered a head injury, was hospitalised, and spent over a month in a psychiatric ward. This allowed him to be released from the army before the end of the mandatory two-year military service. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, Kazennaya skazka, was published in the Novy Mir Russian monthly magazine. He was noticed by the critics and the Russian Booker Prize jury, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 prize.
His next novel was The Matiushin Case (1997).
Pavlov received the Russian Booker Prize in 2002 for his book "Ninth Day Party in Karaganda: or the Story of the Recent Days" (Karagandinskiye deviatiny).
Pavlov was also the author of articles on literature, historical and social aspects of life in Russia, as well as numerous essays. In his 2003 book "The Russian Man in the 20th Century" he wrote about Russian life, not only based on his personal experience, but also on numerous letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s and given to him by the famous Russian writer and dissident and his wife, Natalia.
Oleg Pavlov was said to be one of the most gifted examples of what has been dubbed the “renaissance in Russian literature.”
Pavlov’s novel Asystole (colloquially “cardiac flatline”) was about the tragic essence of human life, the loneliness of the individual in the world of people on the importance and power of love. The novel reads like a confession. Its name sounds like a diagnosis. Asystole - cessation of cardiac activity, cardiac arrest. But the capacity to love gives meaning to life, had been languishing. The novel was published in 2009, prompting the reader an emotional shock, becoming, according to critics, one of the major literary events of recent times. The epigraph to it could be the lines of the European philosopher Emile Cioran Michel: "health - lack of feeling, and therefore - unreality. Ceased to suffer, will cease to exist."
Pavlov died of a heart attack in 2018, aged 48.
Born in Moscow, he served in the Interior Ministry troops near the city of Karaganda. The events that Pavlov portrayed in his stories and novels were inspired by his own experiences as a prison camp guard.
During his service, Pavlov suffered a head injury, was hospitalised, and spent over a month in a psychiatric ward. This allowed him to be released from the army before the end of the mandatory two-year military service. He went on to study at the Institute of Literature in Moscow.
He was only 24 years old when his first novel, Kazennaya skazka, was published in the Novy Mir Russian monthly magazine. He was noticed by the critics and the Russian Booker Prize jury, which short-listed the novel for the 1995 prize.
His next novel was The Matiushin Case (1997).
Pavlov received the Russian Booker Prize in 2002 for his book "Ninth Day Party in Karaganda: or the Story of the Recent Days" (Karagandinskiye deviatiny).
Pavlov was also the author of articles on literature, historical and social aspects of life in Russia, as well as numerous essays. In his 2003 book "The Russian Man in the 20th Century" he wrote about Russian life, not only based on his personal experience, but also on numerous letters received by the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Foundation in the early 1990s and given to him by the famous Russian writer and dissident and his wife, Natalia.
Oleg Pavlov was said to be one of the most gifted examples of what has been dubbed the “renaissance in Russian literature.”
Pavlov’s novel Asystole (colloquially “cardiac flatline”) was about the tragic essence of human life, the loneliness of the individual in the world of people on the importance and power of love. The novel reads like a confession. Its name sounds like a diagnosis. Asystole - cessation of cardiac activity, cardiac arrest. But the capacity to love gives meaning to life, had been languishing. The novel was published in 2009, prompting the reader an emotional shock, becoming, according to critics, one of the major literary events of recent times. The epigraph to it could be the lines of the European philosopher Emile Cioran Michel: "health - lack of feeling, and therefore - unreality. Ceased to suffer, will cease to exist."
Pavlov died of a heart attack in 2018, aged 48.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 17, 2023
Bleak Russian comedy. The steppe is conjured in memorable detail, as are the pointless and hard lives of the soldiers who live there, although there are moments of pathos scattered throughout.
May 19, 2015
Captain of the Steppe sounds like the title of a pre-war boys' own tale of derring-do, cover featuring a moustachioed hussar on a rearing horse. However. This captain, Khabarov, is not a dapper alpha-hero, rather he's reminiscent of the Ealing comedy 'little man against the system' - but this being the Soviet system, not a 1950s British local council, it's a darker story.
One of those typically Communist Bloc satires of bizarre and pointless bureaucratic officiousness, it's set in two army camps near Karaganda, Kazakhstan - a town as proverbial to the Soviets as Timbuktoo was to the British and French Empires - and in the days of Andropov when everything was starting to fall apart. Climate change gets a look-in too, as pathetic fallacy. The black humour, irony, and resigned mood in the face of a system that considers people expendable, is similar to that in other books and films about disaffected soldiers; but in tandem with the organisational decay, the novel doesn't have a big concept at heart like Catch-22 did. (Big concepts, perhaps, belong to the state.)
There's always something happening and the pace is like that of farce; however it's mostly funny-in-your-head humour rather than guffawing out loud; if some descriptions and scenes were ratcheted up and exaggerated a touch, it could easily have become full-on comedy. As it is it's dry and sardonic in a way that at once manages to sound rather British, whilst being perhaps more appropriate to its native environment of residual bruality than Tom Sharpe-style craziness would have been.
There turned out to be some notes at the end that weren't signposted in the ebook contents - useful for clarifying the relative rank of two officers whose rows were worded as if each considered the other (in)subordinate. Luckily many of the local terms were already familiar from reading another novel, about six months ago, also set in Kazakhstan; the notes also explain these.
My knowledge of Russian literature is fairly pathetic. If this book hadn't appeared to be expiring on Scribd (which I've only been using for a few days, still getting my head around it), I'd have left it until I'd read a few more old Russian classics. I can't comment on the alleged similarities to Gogol. As far as those to Solzhenitsyn are concerned - yes, I can see that. It's a similar environment, which the author knows from his own experience, but treated with more humour - arguably easier to do so because this is about the soldiers, not the prisoners, (though at times their conditions aren't an awful lot better) and it's several decades later when the regime wasn't quite as cruel - the soldiers ignore the prisoners rather than tormenting them, which, whilst likeability is hardly the point of characters like these, makes it easier for the reader to care.
May 2015
One of those typically Communist Bloc satires of bizarre and pointless bureaucratic officiousness, it's set in two army camps near Karaganda, Kazakhstan - a town as proverbial to the Soviets as Timbuktoo was to the British and French Empires - and in the days of Andropov when everything was starting to fall apart. Climate change gets a look-in too, as pathetic fallacy. The black humour, irony, and resigned mood in the face of a system that considers people expendable, is similar to that in other books and films about disaffected soldiers; but in tandem with the organisational decay, the novel doesn't have a big concept at heart like Catch-22 did. (Big concepts, perhaps, belong to the state.)
There's always something happening and the pace is like that of farce; however it's mostly funny-in-your-head humour rather than guffawing out loud; if some descriptions and scenes were ratcheted up and exaggerated a touch, it could easily have become full-on comedy. As it is it's dry and sardonic in a way that at once manages to sound rather British, whilst being perhaps more appropriate to its native environment of residual bruality than Tom Sharpe-style craziness would have been.
There turned out to be some notes at the end that weren't signposted in the ebook contents - useful for clarifying the relative rank of two officers whose rows were worded as if each considered the other (in)subordinate. Luckily many of the local terms were already familiar from reading another novel, about six months ago, also set in Kazakhstan; the notes also explain these.
My knowledge of Russian literature is fairly pathetic. If this book hadn't appeared to be expiring on Scribd (which I've only been using for a few days, still getting my head around it), I'd have left it until I'd read a few more old Russian classics. I can't comment on the alleged similarities to Gogol. As far as those to Solzhenitsyn are concerned - yes, I can see that. It's a similar environment, which the author knows from his own experience, but treated with more humour - arguably easier to do so because this is about the soldiers, not the prisoners, (though at times their conditions aren't an awful lot better) and it's several decades later when the regime wasn't quite as cruel - the soldiers ignore the prisoners rather than tormenting them, which, whilst likeability is hardly the point of characters like these, makes it easier for the reader to care.
May 2015
July 6, 2018
This is the story of Captain Ivan Yakovlevich Khabarov and his time spent as a warden in the prison camp village of Karabas in Kazakhstan in the last days of the Soviet empire. Khabarov is a subversive, but that has grown in him as his life in the isolated steppe village continues.
Potatoes feature heavily and it can be read as a satire on the disorder and insanity of the disintegrating USSR, but in the end it is Khaborov’s struggle that stays in the reader’s mind.
Though the cast of characters is not easy to recall, there are moments of magic. The penultimate chapter A Feat In Winter is a highlight. The descriptions of the steppe and the village are timeless, and contrast with the almost impossible lives that the likes of the Captain lived at the time. What difference between them and the zeks (prisoners)?
They write that everyone is equal. But the commander, the boss, is still more important and can’t be compared with the soldier at the sentry post.
A few select potatoes managed to grow, each as good as the next. It’s not just that they took them away, it’s that they went and let them rot pointlessly.
Potatoes feature heavily and it can be read as a satire on the disorder and insanity of the disintegrating USSR, but in the end it is Khaborov’s struggle that stays in the reader’s mind.
Though the cast of characters is not easy to recall, there are moments of magic. The penultimate chapter A Feat In Winter is a highlight. The descriptions of the steppe and the village are timeless, and contrast with the almost impossible lives that the likes of the Captain lived at the time. What difference between them and the zeks (prisoners)?
April 24, 2013
Oleg Pavlov has won the Russian Booker Prize (2002) and the Solzhenitsyn Prize (2012) and he spent his compulsory military service as a prison guard in Kazakhstan. This is where “Captain of the Steppe” is set, in Karabas out on the desolate steppe of Kazakhstan, where the troops receive last year’s newspapers (to keep them informed and for fuel) and rotten potatoes to feed themselves. Our main character here is Captain Ivan Yakovlevich Khabarov or Vania who decides that instead of trying to eat the rotting potatoes he will plough a field and plant them so next year there will be plenty of fresh potatoes to feed the troops. This is where his problems begin. To think outside the square in the last few years of the Soviet Republic and to question authority can only lead to heartache. For a full review go to my blog at messybooker.blogspot.com
August 13, 2011
I only read the title novel, Казённая сказка, the first novel of a trilogy, this time around but look forward to reading the next installment... Pavlov creates vivid settings and situations at a military company/prison in the Soviet steppe. The book is oddly powerful--it's difficult to read but even harder not to read--and filled with absurdity and dark humor.
(There's more about Kaзённая сказка on my blog, here.)
(There's more about Kaзённая сказка on my blog, here.)
November 30, 2025
Voor het eerst een Russische roman UIT gelezen. Ik was eens aan Tolstoj begonnen, nooit afgemaakt.
Dit boek (215 pagina’s) laat je op laagdrempelige manier kennis maken met het oude soldatenleven in de steppe ( lees: wodka, sneeuw, zelf gekweekte aardappels die moeten worden beschermd tegen de staat).
Drie sterren want verhaallijn soms wel even zoeken.
Dit boek (215 pagina’s) laat je op laagdrempelige manier kennis maken met het oude soldatenleven in de steppe ( lees: wodka, sneeuw, zelf gekweekte aardappels die moeten worden beschermd tegen de staat).
Drie sterren want verhaallijn soms wel even zoeken.
April 29, 2022
Wat zal ik hier eens over zeggen? Dit boek gaat nou niet echt ergens heen, het is bizar, grotesk, en heeft een mooie schrijfstijl die toch niet altijd even makkelijk te volgen is. Zeker vermakelijk, maar ik vraag me nog steeds af wat ik nou gelezen heb.
May 12, 2013
A searing satire on the final years of the Soviet Union. Pavlov, who had himself been a conscript prison guard, draws on his experiences to create a ghastly world of torpor, hunger, and alienation, leavened by flashes of mordant wit: a microcosm of Soviet life.
Yes, I know I'm ever so slightly biased, but I thoroughly enjoyed working on this book, and I'm glad to have made it accessible to a wider audience.
Yes, I know I'm ever so slightly biased, but I thoroughly enjoyed working on this book, and I'm glad to have made it accessible to a wider audience.
August 29, 2015
Interessant gegeven! Maar de aandacht verslapte vaak door de stijl, die me niet altijd kon boeien.
June 4, 2024
Fine book. Kinda strange bc so many of the situations are so grim but then people end up being really nice? It just feels like they are not acting together at all. I did like the tangent stories; they created a structure that reminded me of The French Disaptch’s structure a bit. The death was very sudden, very sad, perhaps impactful because of its vainness, but also just odd at face value. Ended too positively. I saw the book as something similar to The Heart of Darkness, and maybe for this reason expected more darkness, but Captain of the Steppe only sort of brought that. 3.5 really. Interesting comments about nature and its rival with human civilization, if one can really call the reality and ‘structure’ that is presented in the book such a thing. 😘
December 5, 2021
3.8 stars
CN: Gun violence, self injury, military conscription, lack of food, animal death, alcoholism, death by fire, death of parents in the past, potential r*pe - it's not clear, suicide attempt, death due to hypothermia
Grimly amusing satirical story of the terrible consequences of authoritarian bureaucratism.
CN: Gun violence, self injury, military conscription, lack of food, animal death, alcoholism, death by fire, death of parents in the past, potential r*pe - it's not clear, suicide attempt, death due to hypothermia
Grimly amusing satirical story of the terrible consequences of authoritarian bureaucratism.
December 31, 2019
De eerst 100 bladzijden zijn prima, maar daarna lijkt de auteur wel een dronken Rus te worden die zijn weg in zijn eigen boek is verloren en zich zwalkend naar het einde sleept.
February 15, 2020
Het gaat nergens over en nergens naartoe maar is continu vermakelijk in zijn ironisch, Russisch absurdisme. .
January 26, 2025
Echt ouderwetse Russische knulligheid uit de vorige eeuw.
February 25, 2017
interessant boek. Het gaat over een regiment Russische soldaten die verhongeren op de Kazachse steppe. ze besluiten hun aardappelen te poten om zo aan meer voedsel te komen maar dat levert veel trammelant op met hogere officieren. Grappig en schrijnend tegelijk.
August 16, 2016
Zoals ik het alleen een Rus zie doen: een entertainend boek over aardappelen, godbetert. In het tweede stuk, zakt het verhaal wat weg maar desalniettemin het beste boek over patatten dat ik al gelezen heb ☺.
September 18, 2022
Het begon wel prima. Maar op gegeven moment verloor ik mijn interesse en ging ik twee regels tegelijk lezen om vaart te maken. En nog miste ik niets. Ik weet nu niet eens meer of ik het nu heb uitgelezen!
May 20, 2013
A modern Russian classic.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews