Day of the Oprichnik: A Novel

It's 2027, and Mother Russia is finally great again. The Soviet years and the messy capitalist confusion that followed are long over, the decadent junkie cyberpunks in the West have been shut out with a huge wall, the Czar is back in the Kremlin, the sacred Russian church is in charge of moral, and the not-so-secret secret police keep everyone in check. Finally, everyone can sit back and be Russian - that is work hard, pray, eat black bread, and try not to notice that the Chinese are making a fortune off them.

Like the title suggests, A Day In The Life Of An Oprichnik borrows the structure from Solzhenitsyn's Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, but instead of a political prisoner, this time we get to follow one of the jailers. (Well, supposedly.) Komyaga is one of the top enforcers in the secret police, and during one day he gets to see a lot of action; he roots out and hangs unwanted elements, he oversees the day's state-approved dissident poetry and makes sure it's not too subversive, he flies to Sibiria to consult with soothsayers and make deals with the Chinese, he does very expensive drugs, he philosophizes on the importance of Russianness... Especially the bits about the serfs and the czar and the church and blind obedience for the greater good. Praise the classics and make sure nobody reads them wrong or writes anything new that might upset the ruling order.

Each kiosk has to have two of each product so the people can choose. It's wise and profound. Our people - God's people - should choose between two products, not three and not thirty-three. When the people choose between two they feel calm, safe for tomorrow, they have no worries and are content. And with a people like that, a content people, great things can be achieved.

It's a gleefully vicious satire Sorokin serves up, both of nationalism and Orwellian controlled pseudo-democracy in general, but also of the Putinist conservative to-thyself-be-enough vision. It's deliberately over the top, ending in an outright pornographical gangbang of the supposedly powerful, but it's hard to miss the point: going forward by going backward and demanding that everyone respect the Good Old Ways will only lead to a snake eating its own tail, losing itself in a dream of what a country should be but never was.

And meanwhile the Chinese buy everyone.