Glas 38, 288 pages, illustrated
ISBN 5-7172-0072-2

Collected in this anthology are stories, which have long become classics in Russian literature and are representative of the exciting and turbulent 1990s. Their themes have become even more relevant today due to the changed situation in Russia in favor of bureaucratic totalitarianism and the unending war in the Caucasus. The stories suggest that we are all in some sense captives: captives of a political system, of circumstances, of our obligations or our illusions, to say nothing of those who are captives in a literal sense.

These stories are grouped in two sections: The Perestroika Chaos and Remembering the Soviet Past. The first section, often verging on the absurd, conveys the chaos in the lives and minds of ordinary Russians in the face of unfamiliar problems. These problems caused many of those unable to adapt to market conditions to feel nostalgic for the seemingly secure Soviet past. The second section is a reminder of that Soviet past for those, including some left-wing intellectuals in the West, who tend to forget its inhuman essence.

Vladimir MAKANIN’s The Captive of the Caucasus, which gives this collection its name, epitomizes the Russo-Chechen conflict in the Caucasus in one episode from the daily warfare going on there. It is a vivid example of the illusory nature of man’s freedom: here Russian troops find themselves captives in a land they imagine they have conquered.

In The Tambourine for the Upper World Victor PELEVIN, the idol of Russian youth, depicts a group of enterprising girls who resuscitate foreign corpses from the battlefields of the Second World War so as to marry them and get themselves out of perestroikaravaged Russia.

In Palmer’s First Flight, Vassily AKSYONOV, the internationally known emigre author, looks at the funny side of the Russo-American cultural gap in the confusion of the first post-Soviet years.

Alexander TEREKHOV, a young and distinctive writer known for his figurative language and wholesome realism, paints a satirical picture of a small provincial town in the throes of a local power struggle in the early 1990s (The Rat-killer).

Vyacheslav RYBAKOV’s fantastic story Hassle offers a weird picture of the post-Soviet excesses and the epidemic of emigration, which the author depicts literally as a disease.

Georgy VLADIMOV’s Booker-prize-winning novel The General and his Army looks back at less-known aspects of the Second World War. The episode we offer depicts the pervasive spying and informing into which the majority of army-men were drawn.

Vassily GROSSMAN, the world-famous 20th century classic, looks at the cruelty of the Civil War in Russia from an unusual angle: a Russian woman commissar happens to give birth in a Jewish home in between battles. Torn between love for her baby and military duty she finally leaves the baby behind to re-join the retreating Red Army.

An undisputed master of realistic prose, Friedrich GORENSTEIN has a wicked sense of humor reminiscent of Ivan Bunin. His Bag in Hand is a funny and frightening portrait of the small person under socialism when chronic shortages of goods and foodstuffs forced so many people to spend so much of their time hunting and queuing for the basics.

Yevgeny POPOV’s Pork Kebabs reverberates with laughter and a teasing humor. The story of a swindling case under socialism it could have taken place today. According to Popov, "literature of the absurd is the realism of the 20th century."

The collection ends with a series of very short stories about communal living in Russia, a concept few Westerners understand.