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- GenresRussiaRussian Literature
228 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1926
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About the author
Valentin Kataev
143 books14 followersValentin Petrovich Kataev (Russian: Валентин Катаев; also spelled Katayev or Kataiev) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright who managed to create penetrating works discussing post-revolutionary social conditions without running afoul of the demands of official Soviet style. Kataev is credited with suggesting the idea for the Twelve Chairs to his brother Yevgeni Petrov and Ilya Ilf. In return, Kataev insisted that the novel be dedicated to him, in all editions and translations. Kataev's relentless imagination, sensitivity, and originality made him one of the most distinguished Soviet writers.
Kataev was born in Odessa (then Russian Empire, now Ukraine) into the family of a teacher and began writing while he was still in gimnaziya (high school). He did not finish the gimnaziya but volunteered for the army in 1915, serving in the artillery. After the October Revolution he was mobilized into the Red Army, where he fought against General Denikin and served in the Russian Telegraph Agency. In 1920, he became a journalist in Odessa; two years later he moved to Moscow, where he worked on the staff of The Whistle (Gudok), where he wrote humorous pieces under various pseudonyms.
His first novel, The Embezzlers (Rastratchiki, 1926), was printed in the journal "Krasnaya Nov". A satire of the new Soviet bureaucracy in the tradition of Gogol, the protagonists are two bureaucrats "who more or less by instinct or by accident conspire to defraud the Soviet state". The novel was well received, and the seminal modernist theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski asked Kataev to adapt it for the stage. It was produced at the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre, opening on 20 April 1928. A cinematic adaptation was filmed in 1931.
His comedy Quadrature of the circle (Kvadratura kruga, 1928) satirizes the effect of the housing shortage on two married couples who share a room.
His novel Time, Forward! (Vremya, vperyod!, 1932) describes workers' attempts to build the huge steel plant at Magnitogorsk in record time. Its title was taken from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky. its theme is the speeding up of time in the Soviet Union where the historical development of a century must be completed in ten years". The heroes are described as "being unable to trust such a valuable thing as time, to clocks, mere mechanical devices." Kataev adapted it as a screenplay, which filmed in 1965.
A White Sail Gleams (Beleyet parus odinoky, 1936) treats the 1905 revolution and the Potemkin uprising from the viewpoint of two Odessa schoolboys. In 1937, Vladimir Legoshin directed a film version, which became a classic children's adventure. Kataev wrote its screenplay and took an active part in the filming process, finding locations and acting as an historical advisor. Many of his contemporaries considered the novel to be a prose poem.
Kataev was born in Odessa (then Russian Empire, now Ukraine) into the family of a teacher and began writing while he was still in gimnaziya (high school). He did not finish the gimnaziya but volunteered for the army in 1915, serving in the artillery. After the October Revolution he was mobilized into the Red Army, where he fought against General Denikin and served in the Russian Telegraph Agency. In 1920, he became a journalist in Odessa; two years later he moved to Moscow, where he worked on the staff of The Whistle (Gudok), where he wrote humorous pieces under various pseudonyms.
His first novel, The Embezzlers (Rastratchiki, 1926), was printed in the journal "Krasnaya Nov". A satire of the new Soviet bureaucracy in the tradition of Gogol, the protagonists are two bureaucrats "who more or less by instinct or by accident conspire to defraud the Soviet state". The novel was well received, and the seminal modernist theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski asked Kataev to adapt it for the stage. It was produced at the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre, opening on 20 April 1928. A cinematic adaptation was filmed in 1931.
His comedy Quadrature of the circle (Kvadratura kruga, 1928) satirizes the effect of the housing shortage on two married couples who share a room.
His novel Time, Forward! (Vremya, vperyod!, 1932) describes workers' attempts to build the huge steel plant at Magnitogorsk in record time. Its title was taken from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky. its theme is the speeding up of time in the Soviet Union where the historical development of a century must be completed in ten years". The heroes are described as "being unable to trust such a valuable thing as time, to clocks, mere mechanical devices." Kataev adapted it as a screenplay, which filmed in 1965.
A White Sail Gleams (Beleyet parus odinoky, 1936) treats the 1905 revolution and the Potemkin uprising from the viewpoint of two Odessa schoolboys. In 1937, Vladimir Legoshin directed a film version, which became a classic children's adventure. Kataev wrote its screenplay and took an active part in the filming process, finding locations and acting as an historical advisor. Many of his contemporaries considered the novel to be a prose poem.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 28, 2025
The civil war is over… The New Economic Policy is in bloom… The state gets richer… Citizens steal…
Respectable chief accountant of the Soviet trust is a main personage and a chief culprit…
The accountant and cashier go to the bank… Twelve thousand official rubles are in their pockets… Their wicked destiny leads them to the bar…
Music is calling for adventures… Music is calling for joy… Music is calling to steal…
Everything drowns in the drunken fog… All the pleasures begin…
After a big family scandal… After an unbridled binge… There is no other way but run away… And the train carries them to the former capital… The unconstrained merriment continues…
There are always those who want to grab a piece of a chocolate cake belonging to others.
Respectable chief accountant of the Soviet trust is a main personage and a chief culprit…
Philip Stephanovitch was a model citizen. And all this notwithstanding, there was just a little impish adventurous streak in his character.
The accountant and cashier go to the bank… Twelve thousand official rubles are in their pockets… Their wicked destiny leads them to the bar…
Suddenly a brisk tune was struck up. The flaxen hair of the pianist fell over the black and white keys of the groaning keyboard.
Three hands moved squealing bows over collapsible music-stands. Brazenly inflated lips began to spit into the narrow mouthpiece of a flute, extracting from the black wood a clear, high and tremulous howl. All this combined in a tune which consumed you and filled the heart with a promise of impossible but easily attainable pleasures.
Music is calling for adventures… Music is calling for joy… Music is calling to steal…
Everything drowns in the drunken fog… All the pleasures begin…
The following morning Philip Stephanovitch woke up at a certain hour… Each person has his own manner of waking in the morning after a drunken orgy, and as nothing is unknown to a Soviet citizen, so there is nothing strange in the fact that one Soviet citizen wakes up in one way, another so, and a third prefers not to awaken, but lies with face to the wall and eyes closed, waiting in vain for the friends who have forgotten to bring him half a vodka and a cucumber.
After a big family scandal… After an unbridled binge… There is no other way but run away… And the train carries them to the former capital… The unconstrained merriment continues…
Philip Stephanovitch, with a dagger in his mouth, was dancing a Caucasian dance in the middle of the room. Over his jacket he wore the tunic of a general, epaulettes jumping up and down like golden claws.
Twisting and turning his long legs in a most unbelievable manner, he was waving a beer bottle, groaning and grimacing. It was terrible. And all round him stood noisy people of the highest society – drunkenly applauding and beating time.
There are always those who want to grab a piece of a chocolate cake belonging to others.
August 22, 2019
This short novel was a pleasant surprise: Valentin Kataev's The Embezzlers reminded me of Gogol. In the 1920s of the NEP, Kataev assumes that embezzlement is very common. An accountant named Filipp Stepanovich Prokhorov and his cashier Vanechka are told to obtain cash for their company's upcoming payroll. Because of all the temptations to embezzle, both are required to go together.
Thus begins a mad odyssey, beginning with Filipp Stepanovich bringing Vanechka home for dinner, only to find that his wife is outraged at his presumption. Prokhorov becomes irate and drags Vanechka with him to drink some vodka and consort with b-girls. Things get worse when they find themselves on a train to Leningrad. They manage to shake the leachlike Isabellochka and wind up on a train to the provinces, where they spend the remainder of the money and find themselves penniless.
Curiously, everyone assumes they have embezzled funds. One person even identifies them by name. It's as if in the cosmos of Lenin's Soviet Union, embezzlement is distressingly common. In the end, the two are back in Moscow, where they are sentenced to five years in prison for their crimes.
Thus begins a mad odyssey, beginning with Filipp Stepanovich bringing Vanechka home for dinner, only to find that his wife is outraged at his presumption. Prokhorov becomes irate and drags Vanechka with him to drink some vodka and consort with b-girls. Things get worse when they find themselves on a train to Leningrad. They manage to shake the leachlike Isabellochka and wind up on a train to the provinces, where they spend the remainder of the money and find themselves penniless.
Curiously, everyone assumes they have embezzled funds. One person even identifies them by name. It's as if in the cosmos of Lenin's Soviet Union, embezzlement is distressingly common. In the end, the two are back in Moscow, where they are sentenced to five years in prison for their crimes.
September 26, 2012
Another classic comic novel from the early Soviet period. I love this stuff. A couple of clerks abscond with a suitcase full of government cash and find themselves on an increasingly drunken and bizarre odyssey through twenties Leningrad. I have often thought that this book would make a great jazzy modernist ballet, with music by Prokofiev and Shostakovich and others of the era...
Kataev was a fascinating figure: a writer whose career spanned the Soviet era, and who managed to maintain a high degree of integrity while working under the punishing conditions of 'Socialist Realism'. I have a fascination for such writers - writers who by choice or necessity could not go the way of dissidence or exile, but would not simply buckle down to the 'party line'. They were real writers.
Kataev was a fascinating figure: a writer whose career spanned the Soviet era, and who managed to maintain a high degree of integrity while working under the punishing conditions of 'Socialist Realism'. I have a fascination for such writers - writers who by choice or necessity could not go the way of dissidence or exile, but would not simply buckle down to the 'party line'. They were real writers.
January 4, 2017
A tragicomic farce about a pair of Moscow clerks who embark on a spontaneous bender with a suitcase full of roubles from the office treasury. Not much depth to the characters. They stagger drunkenly from one scene to the next, roaming further and further away from Moscow as the money trickles away.
July 8, 2025
Valentin Kataev, figura di spicco della letteratura sovietica, ci consegna con quest'opera, un romanzo che, pur affondando le radici nella Russia post-rivoluzionaria, risuona di sorprendente attualità. Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1926, si configura come una satira pungente e ricca di umorismo, capace di esplorare le fragilità umane e le assurdità burocratiche con una lucidità disarmante.
La trama segue le disavventure di Prochorov, un contabile onesto ma ingenuo, che si trova coinvolto in una spirale di malversazioni finanziarie a sua insaputa. Il suo compagno di sventura è Vanečka, un giovane irresponsabile e vanesio che incarna la leggerezza e l'opportunismo tipici di un'epoca di grandi cambiamenti e incertezze. La loro fuga da Mosca, con l'intento di sfuggire alle conseguenze delle loro azioni (o inazioni), diventa il pretesto per una serie di incontri e situazioni esilaranti, ma al tempo stesso malinconiche.
Kataev eccelle nel delineare i suoi personaggi, rendendoli caricature vivide e memorabili della società dell'epoca. Nonostante le loro imperfezioni e la loro comica goffaggine, essi mantengono una profondità che impedisce al lettore di ridurli a semplici macchiette. L'autore utilizza un linguaggio frizzante e colloquiale, intriso di un'ironia sottile che pervade ogni dialogo e descrizione. Questa scelta stilistica contribuisce a rendere la lettura fluida e accattivante, nonostante la complessità sociale e politica del contesto storico.
A mio parere è un classico intramontabile per quella sua capacità di trascendere il proprio tempo e luogo. La critica alla burocrazia ottusa, alla corruzione latente e alla tendenza umana all'autoinganno sono temi universali che Kataev affronta con maestria. Il romanzo non si limita a far ridere; invita alla riflessione sulle conseguenze dell'irresponsabilità individuale e collettiva, e sul sottile confine tra furbizia e ingenuità.
Un'opera che merita di essere riscoperta. È una commedia degli equivoci dal sapore agrodolce, un'analisi acuta della natura umana e un affresco storico che, pur descrivendo un'epoca passata, ci parla ancora oggi con sorprendente chiarezza.
Un libro che vi farà sorridere, ma che vi lascerà anche con più di un interrogativo.
La trama segue le disavventure di Prochorov, un contabile onesto ma ingenuo, che si trova coinvolto in una spirale di malversazioni finanziarie a sua insaputa. Il suo compagno di sventura è Vanečka, un giovane irresponsabile e vanesio che incarna la leggerezza e l'opportunismo tipici di un'epoca di grandi cambiamenti e incertezze. La loro fuga da Mosca, con l'intento di sfuggire alle conseguenze delle loro azioni (o inazioni), diventa il pretesto per una serie di incontri e situazioni esilaranti, ma al tempo stesso malinconiche.
Kataev eccelle nel delineare i suoi personaggi, rendendoli caricature vivide e memorabili della società dell'epoca. Nonostante le loro imperfezioni e la loro comica goffaggine, essi mantengono una profondità che impedisce al lettore di ridurli a semplici macchiette. L'autore utilizza un linguaggio frizzante e colloquiale, intriso di un'ironia sottile che pervade ogni dialogo e descrizione. Questa scelta stilistica contribuisce a rendere la lettura fluida e accattivante, nonostante la complessità sociale e politica del contesto storico.
A mio parere è un classico intramontabile per quella sua capacità di trascendere il proprio tempo e luogo. La critica alla burocrazia ottusa, alla corruzione latente e alla tendenza umana all'autoinganno sono temi universali che Kataev affronta con maestria. Il romanzo non si limita a far ridere; invita alla riflessione sulle conseguenze dell'irresponsabilità individuale e collettiva, e sul sottile confine tra furbizia e ingenuità.
Un'opera che merita di essere riscoperta. È una commedia degli equivoci dal sapore agrodolce, un'analisi acuta della natura umana e un affresco storico che, pur descrivendo un'epoca passata, ci parla ancora oggi con sorprendente chiarezza.
Un libro che vi farà sorridere, ma che vi lascerà anche con più di un interrogativo.
April 28, 2012
Entertaining farce.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews