The Third Truth

by Leonid Borodin, Kelly Catriona (Translator)

A novel that describes the friendship of a poacher and a gamekeeper who have little in common but loyalty to their own ideals. Leonid Borodin has alwo written "The Story of a Strange Time" and "Partings".

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Leonid Ivanovich Borodin (Russian: Леони́д Ива́нович Бороди́н) (14 April 1938 – 25 November 2011) was a Russian novelist and journalist.

Born in Irkutsk, Borodin was a Christian and a Soviet dissident. In the 1960s he belonged to the anti-Communist All-Russian Social-Christian Union. He was arrested and imprisoned in the 'strict regime' Camp 17 in 1967, and went on hunger strike there with Yuli Daniel and Aleksandr Ginzburg in 1969. After his release in 1973, Borodin’s works were smuggled out of the Soviet Union. The publication in English translation of The Story of a Strange Time led to his arrest in 1982 on charges of 'anti-Soviet propaganda'. He was sentenced to 10 years' hard labour in Perm-36 Maximum Security Camp (ITK-6), as well as five years' internal exile. Released after four years, in the perestroika era, Borodin was allowed to visit the west with his wife.

A winner of many literary prizes, including the 2002 Solzhenitsyn Prize, Borodin was editor-in-chief of Moskva, a popular literary magazine.

Reviews

[Kriegslok · Rating 4 out of 5]

"They'd taken a long saw, set to perfection, and sawed a man along his length, and what was left was only half a man"

This novel tells the lives of two men who become friends as a result of an almost deadly conflict between themselves, Selivanov a poacher and Ivan the game warden. Both are men of the "taiga", the vast, largely human unpopulated, untamable, habitat of Siberia. Meanwhile, the new Soviet state is trying to tame the people. For the inhabitants of the "taiga" life goes on as far as possible as it always did, accepting no authority but that of nature. Selivanov is scathing of those who serve others 'The Reds and the Whites had made use of the peasants so they could smash each other to pieces, but if the peasants had strayed true to their own truth, what would've happened then?', trusting only his own judgement. In the process he aids a dying White officer and his daughter, an act that will change the lives of both Selivanov and Ivan. Ivan ends up in the Gulag, an experience that changes him beyond recognition. Meanwhile the whole country is being brought to heel and remoulded, even his beloved "taiga":'...A weak flow seeped out from under a tussock, and the water stank like a stagnant bog. Everywhere lay tins, paper, rags and all manner of human filth. But worse than that; some degenerate species of human had got hold of an axe and slashed the trees, one by one, out of hatred for beauty and freedom; those that were still standing bore the scars of the hooligans flailing. The taiga, defenceless, disfigured, quietly wept its tears of resin.'This is a powerful book, full of neat observations about human character and packed with allegories and metaphors. It is also the story of a wiley peasant mind which is not prepared to bow to "the powers that be". It is a story of all the big human questions: what, why, how....
"What is it that happens to a person? thought Selivanov. Everything stays exactly as it was - face, hands, feet, but it's already not a person, it's a spent cartridge case. A lifeless person isn't a person if there's no life in him! Then what are you left with? Is a man life, then? Any life? What is life, if it can be there and then not be there? Start and end? Where does it go to when it ends? One pop, and then no life? And after a day there's only rot left. Where does it all go to? -"

[Matt Frear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful invocation of the Siberia of that period, coupled with fascinating and ultimately tragic characters. Any Russian novel that looks beyond Moscow and St Petersburg/Leningrad is always interesting.