“Moscow 2042” Voinovich in brief summary


Vitaly Kartsev, a Russian emigrant writer who lived in Munich, in June 1982 had the opportunity to be in Moscow in 2042.

Preparing for the trip, Kartsev met his classmate Leszek Bukashev. Bukashev made a career in the USSR along the lines of the KGB. It seemed that the meeting was not accidental and that Bukashev knew about Kartsev’s unusual trip.

In the midst of the charges Kartsevu phoned another old Moscow friend Leopold Zilberovich and ordered immediately to go to Canada.

Zilberovich called on behalf of Sim Simych Karnavalov. At one time it was Leo who discovered Karnavalov as a writer. Sim Simych, a zek in the past, worked as a stoker in a kindergarten, led an ascetic life and wrote from morning till night. They thought of the fundamental work “The Great Zone” in sixty volumes, which the author himself called “blocks”. Shortly after Karnavalova was “discovered” in Moscow, he began to print abroad and instantly gained

fame. All Soviet power – the police, the KGB, the Writers’ Union – entered into a fight with him. But they could not arrest him, they could not send him: after remembering the story with Solzhenitsyn, Carnavalov appealed to the whole world asking him not to accept him if the “swallows” would force him out. Then the authorities had no choice but to simply push him out of the plane, which flew over Holland. In the end Sim Simych settled in Canada in his own estate, called Otradnoe, where everything was set in Russian: eating cabbage soup, porridge, women wore sarafans and scarves. The owner himself memorized Dahl’s dictionary for the night, and in the morning rehearsed a solemn entry to Moscow on a white horse.

Kartsevu Carnavalov instructed to take to Moscow thirty-six already ready “blocks” of the “Great Zone” and a letter to the “Future rulers of Russia.”

And Kartsev went to Moscow for the future. On the pediment of the airport terminal he first saw five portraits: Christ, Marx, Engels, Lenin… The fifth one was for some reason similar

to Leshka Bukashev.

The passengers who arrived with Kartsev were quickly loaded into the armored personnel carrier by people with automatic weapons. Kartsev was not touched by the warriors. He was met by another group of soldiers: three men and two women who introduced themselves as members of the anniversary Pentagon. It turned out that the Pentagon was commissioned to prepare and hold the centenary of the writer Kartsev, because he is a classic of the pre-literature, whose works are studied in the pre-commemorates. Kartsev absolutely did not understand anything. Then met the ladies gave Kartseva some further explanations. It turned out that as a result of the Great August Communist Revolution, carried out under the leadership of the Genialissimo, it became possible to build communism in a single city. It was Moskorep. And now the Soviet Union, being generally socialist,

To implement the program for building communism, Moscow was surrounded by a six-meter fence with barbed wire from above and was guarded by automatic shooting installations.

Entering the Kabesot, Kartsev got acquainted there with a newspaper printed in the form of a roll. I read, in particular, the Genialissimo’s decree on renaming the Klyazma River to the Karl Marx River, an article on the benefits of thrift and much more in the same way.

The next morning the writer woke up at the Kommunisticheskaya Hotel and went down the stairs to the yard. There it smelled like a barn. In the yard there was a turn to the kiosk, and the people standing in it were holding canisters, pots and night pots. “What do they give?” – Kartsev asked, “They do not give, but give it off,” replied a short-legged aunt. “What’s that?” They say, what else? ” A poster hung on the kiosk: “Whoever delivers the product is secondary, that is supplied perfectly.”

The writer was walking around Moscow and was constantly surprised. On Red Square there were no St. Basil’s Cathedral, a monument to Minin with Pozharsky and the Mausoleum. The star on the Spassky Tower was not ruby, but tin, and the Mausoleum, as it turned out, along with the one who was lying in it, was sold to some oil tycoon. People walked in the military clothes on the sidewalks. The cars were mainly steam and gas-generating, and more – armored personnel carriers. In a word, a picture of poverty and decline. I had to have a bite in the precombination, on the facade of which hung a poster :. “Whoever surrenders the product is secondary, that feeds perfectly.” In the menu there were soup “Lebedushka”, pork vegetarian, jelly and natural water. Pork Kartsev could not: being the primary product, it smelled like about secondary.

At the place of the restaurant “Aragvi” was placed the state experimental public house. But there the writer was disappointed. It turned out that for customers with common needs, self-service is provided.

Gradually it turned out that the supreme pentagon established for Kartsev increased needs, and places where he accidentally ended up were intended for communes needs common. The regime kindly favored him because the Genialissimo really turned out to be Leshka Bukashev.

Wherever Kartsev visited, he met the word “SIM” written on the walls. These inscriptions were made by the so-called Simites, that is, opponents of the regime, waiting for the return of Karnavalov as king.

Carnival did not die, it was frozen and stored in Switzerland. Communist rulers began to interpret Kartsev that art does not reflect life, but transforms it, or rather, life reflects art, and therefore he, Kartsev, must cross out Karnavalov from his book. At the same time they let the author read this book, written by him in the future and therefore not yet read by him.

But the writer was stoic – he did not agree to cross out his hero. Meanwhile, scientists unfrozen Karnavalov, he solemnly drove to Moscow on a white horse and established a monarchy in the territory of the former Soviet Union, including Poland, Bulgaria and Romania as provinces. Instead of mechanical means of transportation, the new monarch introduced living draft power, replacing science with the study of the Law of God, the dictionary of Dahl and the “Great Zone.” He introduced corporal punishment, ordered men to wear beards, and women – piety and modesty.

The writer Kartsev flew to Munich in 1982 and sat down there to compose this very book.


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“Moscow 2042” Voinovich in brief summary